Last year, we looked at Eleanor Porter’s book dedications and began with Pollyanna which she dedicated to Cousin Belle. We noted:
Other than her immediate family, most of the dedicatees that we can identify were Woolson relations or friends from Springfield, Vermont where she and John lived for the better part of the 1890s.
It seems that EHP’s book dedications did not include her Hodgman relations.
1863 Mrs. Hodgman
On her twenty second birthday, Sep. 22 1863, Luella French Woolson married 23-year-old Francis Fletcher Hodgman. Both were from prosperous Littleton NH families They settled into a house on Main St., Littleton, NH. Also, in Littleton that year, her sister Frances “Fanny” Woolson had married wealthy industrialist Adna Brown (on February 3, 1863) and was living very comfortably in Springfield, Vermont.
Upon his father’s death in 1864, Frank inherited the family’s Main Street apothecary where he had worked for several years. He and Luella had two children: Fred (b. 1864) a future mechanical engineer, and Eleanor “Nellie” (b. 1868), a future musician and author. Francis Hodgman was an active citizen (see Eleanor’s Father in The Beldingsville Beacon)’
About the time of Eleanor’s birth, Francis contracted tuberculosis. In 1870 he began to travel to find a cure. He had a “handsome” inheritance that seems to have been largely exhausted when he died at age thirty six.
1876 Widow Hodgman
His wife of almost thirteen years was bereft of a husband and breadwinner. It would have been expected that Frank’s family would respond to assist the widow, but Frank’s brother, Charles, who lived in Littleton, was probably unable to help. As the excerpt from the Littleton town History relates: “Charles, who had the jewelry branch, retired early in the 70s and worked thereafter for others, as his broken health would permit.” Drawing from The History of Littleton, we know that Charles Hodgman (1836-1895) had married a Springfield, Vermont woman named Sarah Taylor, the sole Hodgman aunt (1839-1892). They had three boys, and a girl.
The Hodgman cousins grew up in Littleton near to Fred and Nellie Hodgman. According to the 1905 Jackson history, there was Samuel Willard Hodgman (b.1863) who enlisted to fight in the Spanish American War but saw no action. Samuel also served in the Philippine Army. He is buried in Littleton. Herbert Clyde Hodgman (1867) married a Massachusetts woman named Jennie. He was apparently a jeweler, maybe in Littleton. Herbert and Jennie provided Eleanor Porter a niece, Hazel, in 1894. The Hodgman daughter, Carrie Louisa Hodgman, born in 1874, married a Massachusetts man named Durkee; she died in Santa Barbara California in 1938. The youngest boy, Burns Plummer Hodgman, born in 1875, was a lawyer. He moved to Concord, New Hampshire and became a clerk of court. He and Eleanor Porter are the only “Hodgmans” listed in NH Notables of 1920.
Despite the incapacity of her in-laws, widowed Luella Hodgman remained in Littleton for a time and earned a living by privately teaching art and selling her paintings. (See Tribute to Luella in The Beldingsville Beacon.) But Luella increasingly stayed with her sister Frances who lived in great affluence in Springfield Vermont. She and Eleanor moved to Boston in 1888 when Eleanor studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. During the 1890s, Luella lived with Eleanor and John Porter in Springfield. By 1900, when Eleanor began to write her stories and novels, she lived in Cambridge, MA. The Hodgman connection had melted away.
Eleanor dedicated her first book, Cross Currents — The Story of Margaret (1907) to her mother, Luella Woolson Hodgman. Her second book, The Turn of the Tide (1908), she dedicated to her husband, John Lyman Porter. Her third book, The Story of Marco,(1911) nodded to her older brother, Fred, and his wife Clara Hodgman. But Eleanor dedicated no more books to anyone named Hodgman, the family into which her mother had married.
An Unlikely Alliance?
The Hodgmans and Woolsons were an unlikely alliance to begin with. The families’ civic and social backgrounds were incongruent.
The Woolsons were Democrats. The Hodgmans were Republicans.
The year Eleanor was born, Republican Ulysses S. Grant was elected President on a platform of Reconstruction which favored Negro suffrage and a powerful US executive. The Democratic candidate for President was NY Governor Horatio Seymour who had opposed Abolition and now opposed Reconstruction. He favored self-determination for individual states.
The Woolsons were Congregationalists. The Hodgmans were Episcopalians.
The Episcopal Church had been part of the Anglican Communion, the state religion of England. Following the American Revolution, it retained the traditional Anglican observances but no longer paid tribute to the King. Governed by a hierarchy of bishops, the New Hampshire Episcopal church was under the Bishop of Boston. It was more influential in states outside of New England.
The Congregational Church is New England-grown. It evolved from the mode of worship of Puritan colonists. It had no Bishops. Local congregations governed themselves. It had been in the vanguard of the Abolition movement and promoted progressive causes like Prohibition, Women’s Suffrage and workplace reform. A devout Congregationalist, Eleanor Porter was a prolific contributor to Christian publications. Her “reformist” fiction laments society’s hypocrisy and condemns mistreatment of the defenseless.
Frank made it work
From what we can find out about his life, Francis Fletcher Hodgman was not content to be merely another shopkeeper. Apothecaries were essential in the era before physician licensing was reformed in the next century. He was depicted as a dynamic individual in the Annals volume of the 1898 Littleton Town History which vividly recalled him more than twenty years after his death:
The sons of Francis Hodgman, who had divided his business when it became their inheritance, did not continue with it long. Charles, who had the jewelry branch, retired early in the 70s and worked thereafter for others, as his broken health would permit. Francis Fletcher Hodgman acquired the drugs and medicines, and did a successful business for some years. He was endowed with an ardent nature, and gave to every enterprise he espoused an enthusiastic support. From the organization of the Musical Association until 1874 he was its treasurer, and no little of its success was due to his untiring work on its behalf.
He was a good businessman. He was energetic and high-spirited. Frank had a scientific bent; he knew chemistry and botany. He was a respected lepidopterist. And, his cultural pursuits were more like a Woolson than a Hodgman. Frank married an artistic woman with a rich cultural ancestry; Luella counted authors Constance Fenimore Woolson and James Fenimore Cooper as relations. She led Frank’s talented daughter to a musical career.
We pay tribute to Francis Fletcher Hodgman for Eleanor’s industry and ardent spirit. We are grateful to Luella Hodgman for endowing Eleanor with the Woolson creativity and pursuit of culture.
POLITICS AND RELIGION
It is tempting to apply modern biases and vocabulary to circumstances in the far past. Professional historians call this error “Presentism.” It can be an honest mistake. But it is often employed intentionally by false advocates and propagandists who depend on our ignorance of history to dishonor the past so as to trumpet their own virtues. Presentism is employed by activists throughout the political spectrum and is inexcusably rife in news and opinion media.
NOTE: We must disappoint readers who anticipated the promised Pollyanna Palimpsest There were technical difficulties. The project can wait.
In the next edition of The Beldingsville Beacon we will visit with Veronica Francis at the Pollyanna Shop on Main Street, Littleton, NH.
Copyright © Jim McIntosh 2023