Alice Morse Earle Explained

Alice Morse Earle (April 27, 1851February 16, 1911) was an American historian and writer from Worcester, Massachusetts.

She was christened Mary Alice by her parents Edwin Morse and Abby Mason Clary. On April 15, 1874, she married Henry Earle of New York City with whom she had four children, including the botanical illustrator Alice Clary Earle Hyde.^[1] She changed her name from Mary Alice Morse to Alice Morse Earle. Her writings, beginning in 1890, focused on daily colonial life rather than grand events, and thus are invaluable for modern US social historians. She wrote a number of books on colonial America (and especially the New England region) such as Home Life In Colonial Days, Old Time Gardens, Costume of Colonial Times, and Curious Punishments of Bygone Days.

She was a passenger aboard the RMS Republic when, while in a dense fog, that ship collided with the SS Florida. During the transfer of passengers, Alice fell into the water. Her near drowning in 1909 off the coast of Nantucket during this abortive trip to Egypt weakened her health sufficiently that she died two years later, in Hempstead, Long Island.

Partial bibliography

• The Sabbath in Puritan New England (1891)
• China Collecting in America (1892)
• Customs and Fashions in Old New England (1893)
• Diary of Anna Green Winslow, A Boston School Girl of 1771 (1894)
• Costume of Colonial Times (1894)
• Colonial Dames and Goodwives (1895)^[2]
• Margaret Winthrop (1895)^[2]
• Colonial Days in Old New York (1896)
• Curious Punishments of Bygone Days (1896)
• In Old Narragansett: Romances and Realities (1898)
• Home Life in Colonial Days (1898)^[3]
• Child Life in Colonial Days (1899)^[4]
• Stagecoach and Tavern Days at www.quinnipiac.edu Stagecoach and Tavern Days (1900) or at Internet Archive^[5]
• Old Time Gardens (1901)
• Sun Dials and Roses of Yesterday (1902)^[6]
• Two Centuries of Costume in America, 1620–1820 (2 vols., 1903)

Further reading

• "Alice Morse Earle," in Notable American Women: Volume 1. 4th ed., Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975.
• Susan Reynolds Williams, Alice Morse Earle and the Domestic History of Early America. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013.

External links

• • • Article at Encyclopædia Britannica
      • Review of Earle's Home Life in Colonial Days
• Colonial days in old New York by Alice Morse Earle. Cornell University Library New York State Historical Literature Collection, (reprinted by Cornell University Library Digital Collections)
• Showing all quotes that contain 'Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. and Today is a gift'.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Earle, Alice Morse, Collection, 1890 - 1951 . American Antiquarian Society . 5 January 2022.
2. Review of Colonial Dames and Good Wives by Alice Morse Earle and Margaret Winthrop by Alice Morse Earle. The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. 4 April 1896. 81. 2110. 357.
3. the hathi trust page cited says 1898...was probably missread or written, so previously misplaced in the bibliography list.
4. Review of Child Life in Colonial Days by Alice Morse Earle. The Athenæum. 21 April 1900. 3782. 488–489. Buckingham. James Silk. Sterling. John. Maurice. Frederick Denison. Stebbing. Henry. Dilke. Charles Wentworth. Hervey. Thomas Kibble. Dixon. William Hepworth. MacColl. Norman. Rendall. Vernon Horace. Murry. John Middleton.
5. Web site: Stage-coach and tavern days. Alice Morse. Earle. October 22, 1900. New York, The Macmillan company; London, Macmillan & co., ltd.. Internet Archive.
6. Review of Sun Dials and Roses of Yesterday by Alice Morse Earle. The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. 9 May 1903. 95. 2980. 591–592.