Civil War Photos: Lucretia Electa and Louisa Ellen Crossett

Sisters Lucretia Electa and Louisa Ellen Crossett in identical skirts, blouses, and jewelry with weaving shuttles

The photograph above was taken on September 26, 1859, by a photographer based in Lawrence, MA. It depicts Lucretia Electa Crossett, age 22, with her sister Louisa Ellen Crossett, age 18. As you can see, the women are dressed identically down to their jewelry, and are holding weaving shuttles. Lucretia is also wearing a pair of scissors in her skirt.

I find this photograph interesting for several reasons. To begin with, it is a mirror or an inversion of the typical Civil War photographs of men. In such photographs, a pair of men might appear wearing identical uniforms and holding the weapons they used at war, such as firearms and swords. Certain items might be tucked into their belts, such as a cartridge box or canteen. Like these men, Lucretia and Louisa are in uniform and are holding and wearing the instruments that represented their place in society. Men were soldiers; women were weavers. Women, both as weavers and as mothers, were creators, and men were destroyers.*

A second reason that this picture is interesting is that it was taken in 1859, two years before the war photographs that I see as parallels to it would be produced. It indicates that even before the Civil War, both the visual conventions by which the war photographs would be constructed and the symbolic conventions by which such photographs signaled their subjects' place in life were already established, in the same way that the social, economic, and political forces that ultimately led to the Civil War were established long, long before the war itself began.

*I don't write "men were destroyers" as my own opinion, but rather as a way that these pictures might be interpreted in their sociological context. In the nineteenth century (and many centuries before it), men and women were placed in opposition to each other in society. Masculine and feminine were considered to be opposing forces. While men might have been considered threatening by women for their supposedly "natural" role in warfare and violence, women were certainly considered threatening by men for their natural role in reproduction. It is for this reason that witch hunts targeted women, and particularly those women whose personal characteristics drew attention to the true power of women in contrast to their supposed weakness. I just read The Devil in the Shape of a Woman by Carol Karlsen and am now reading The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World by John Demos - can you tell?

*

Lucretia and Louisa were the daughters of Gad Crossett and Marietta Streeter. Gad was a descendant of Anthony du Crozat, who was born in France and settled in Ireland, where he married an Irish woman, Laura Thompson, in the county with the best name ever, Carrickfergus. After three generations, the Crossetts crossed the Atlantic Ocean, settling in Pelham, Massachusetts. Gad Crossett was the son of Jason Crossett and Lydia Corse, and was born on January 17, 1815, in Duxbury, Vermont.

Marietta Streeter, who was born September 11, 1814, was the daughter of of Jabez Streeter and Sally Skinner. Lucretia, born in 1837, was Gad and Marietta's first child. Ultimately, they would have twelve children, including two sets of twins, a fact that apparently greatly impressed the 1860 census enumerator, who made note of it on the census (see below). Luckily, the eye roll hadn't been invented yet in the nineteenth century - if it had, Gad and Marietta would have encountered plenty of them for the names they gave their twins: George and Georgianna (born 1844) and James and Jane (born 1849).

I have to wonder if the presence of two sets of twins in the family had any influence on Lucretia and Louisa's (who was born in 1841) decision to dress identically for their photograph. Probably not, but the motif of doubles in the Crossett family is interesting and, as you will see, continues.

The Crossetts' other children included Edward (1839), Henry Willis (1842), Cornelia Ann (1846), Lucy Ann (1851), Roswell Gad (1854), and Alice Martha (1857). In 1850, the family lived in Montpelier, Vermont, where Gad worked as a laborer.

1850 US Federal Census

Ten years later, the family lived in Duxbury, Vermont. Marietta had given birth to her last child, Alice, three years earlier at the age of 40. Her first child was born when she was 23, so that makes twelve children in seventeen years. That's a lot of exclamation points.

1860 US Federal Census

On September 1, 1862, two of the Crossett boys - Henry, age 20, and George, age 18 - enlisted in Company B of the 10th Vermont Infantry Regiment. Neither survived the war, but as both lived long enough to be transported to the Regimental Hospital in Burlington, Vermont, there is a chance that they may have seen their family again before they died. George died of typhoid on August 17, 1863, and Henry died of a gunshot wound to the head on March 27, 1864, in the hospital.

Imagine if there had been a photograph of Henry and George, the Crossett soldiers, to match that of Lucretia and Louisa, the Crossett weavers. When they went off to war, the boys would have been the same age as the girls were when they were photographed. The girls survived the war; the boys didn't. As they aged, the girls' photograph would continuously change, as they found themselves looking older and older in comparison to their youthful appearances. The boys' photograph, on the other hand, would always stay the same. It would have seemed like they had never left the photograph.

* 

Years later, the fractured family was still living in Vermont. Gad and Marietta's house was now completely empty of children. Lucretia had married Lemuel Chandler, a farmer, and was living in Berlin, Vermont, with their two children, on the farm that Lemuel's grandfather had settled in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Lemuel's father, Daniel Chandler, grew up in a log cabin on that farm, and married Hannah, the daughter of Joseph and Temperance Sloan.

Lemuel, who was born in 1832, attended Randolph Academy in Randolph, Vermont. He was an active member of the Republican party and held several public offices in the Town of Berlin, including the Justice of the Peace. He was also a member of the local Grange. He and Lucretia married on May 1, 1861. In 1870, they had two children, Myron Lemuel and Ervin Leon.

1870 US Federal Census

Ultimately, the Chandlers would have five children, all of whom were living with them in 1880. George Waldo was born in 1871, Marion Lucretia in 1873, and Mabel Winifred in 1875.

1880 US Federal Census

The three youngest Chandler children remained in their parents' home into adulthood. Both Marion and Mabel attended the Northfield High School and became school teachers; Marion also worked as a dressmaker in the early 1900s. George took over his father's farm for several years and built a new house on the property before he moved to Montpelier, Vermont, to work in real estate. Like his father, he was a Republican who served in public office in Berlin. He married Lora Johnston in 1902 and died in 1951.

1900 US Federal Census

By 1910, only the two youngest Chandler girls were left at home. At 36, Marion would have been considered an old maid, but she did marry, six years later, to Leonard Westley Hopkins. Leonard was a janitor at the school in Barre where Marion taught, and was the son of Alden Hopkins and Martha McSeeley.

1910 US Federal Census

Lucretia Crossett Chandler died in 1917, and Lemuel Chandler in 1918; she of "bulbous paralysis" and acute bronchitis, and he of cerebral hemorrhage. The "medical attendant" listed on their death certificates was their son, Myron Lemuel Chandler.

Death Certificate of Lucretia Crossett Chandler

Mabel, Lucretia and Lemuel's only unmarried child, lived with her sister Marion Hopkins and her husband in 1920. Leonard Hopkins died in 1924 of nephritis in their home in Barre. The medical attendant listed on his death certificate was also Myron Chandler.

Dr. Myron Lemuel Chandler

Marion died three years later in the Barre City Hospital at the age of 53, of a perforated gall bladder. Guess who her medical attendant was? In the span of ten years, Myron attended to both his parents, his sister, brother-in-law, and his daughter (see below) in their final illnesses.

Myron graduated as valedictorian of Norwich University at Northfield in 1885 and earned his degree in medicine at the University of Vermont in 1891. In 1893, he began his practice in Barre, and in 1907 became a surgeon at the Barre City Hospital. From 1909 to 1913 he also worked as the official decoy for President William Howard Taft.

He married Alice May Kendall in 1897 and had three children: Myron Briggs (born 1899), Mary Alice (1900-1910), and Lemuel Kendall (born 1908). Mary Alice died of scarlet fever, and her father was listed on her death certificate as her medical attendant. Myron died in 1927, the same year as his sister Marion, of myocarditis. His medical attendant was J. W. Stewart. His wife Alice Kendall Chandler died in 1948 in Los Angeles.

The final child of Lucretia and Lemuel Chandler whom I haven't mentioned was Ervin Leon Chandler. He worked as a farmer, a machinist, and a carpenter in Berlin and married Gertrude I. Briggs, with whom he had two daughters, Ruth Gertrude (born 1896) and Grace Lucretia (born 1899). Ervin died in 1928.

Mabel Chandler, the youngest and only single Chandler child, outlived all of her siblings and several of her nieces and nephews, dying in 1962 in the Barre City Hospital at the age of 87.

1. Gad Crossett (1815-1875) m. Marietta Streeter (1814-1903) dau. of Jabez Streeter and Sally Skinner
1. Lucretia Electa Crossett (1837-1917) m. Lemuel Chandler (1832-1918) son of Daniel Chandler and Hannah Sloan in 1861
1. Myron Lemuel Chandler (1864-1927) m. Alice May Kendall (1870-1948) in 1897
1. Myron Briggs Chandler (1899-)
2. Mary Alice Chandler (1900-1910)
3. Lemuel Kendall Chandler (1908-1940)
2. Ervin Leon Chandler (1866-1928) m. Gertrude I. Briggs (1866-1938)
1. Ruth Gertrude Chandler (1896-)
2. Grace Lucretia Chandler (1899-)
3. George Waldo Chandler (1871-1951) m. Lora Johnston in 1902
4. Marion Lucretia Chandler (1873-1927) m. Leonard Westly Hopkins (1860-1924) in 1916
5. Mabel Winifred Chandler (1875-1962)
2. Edward Crossett (1839-1867)
3. Louisa Ellen Crossett (1841-1875)
4. Henry Willis Crossett (1842-1864)
5. George Crossett (1844-1863)
6. Georgianna Crossett (1844-)
7. Cornelia Ann Crossett (1846-1909)
8. Jane Crossett (1849-1865)
9. James Crossett (1849-)
10. Lucy Ann Crossett (1851-1863)
11. Roswell Gad Crossett (1854-1931) m. Ella Cordelia Jones (1864-1938) in 1882
12. Alice Martha Crossett (1857-1868)

Sources
Carleton, Hiram. Genealogical and Family History of the State of Vermont. New York: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1903.

"Crossett Hill" in Under the Hump, Duxbury Historical Society Newsletter, Issue 5 (January 2007).

Cutter, William Richard. New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial: A Record of the Achievements of Her People in the Making of Commonwealths and the Founding of a Nation, Volume 4. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1914.

Ellis, William Arba. Norwich University, 1819-1911. Montpelier, VT: The Capital City Press, 1911.