PBA Galleries

Between 1 and 3 pages each, on 4-page stampless covers 25.5x20.3 cm. (10x8").

In the first letter Jarvis writes at length and with much tribulation about his pending divorce, with an avaricious soon-to-be-ex-wife, "Mrs. J. is insane or frightfully wicked." By the second letter the unpleasantness of separation has apparently eased, and he writes of publishing his lectures, success of his students, etc., noting at one juncture that "the people of New York are not a highly cultivated society like that of Boston," and in Boston "The intellect of the country is Unitarian and Calvinistic with puritan associations habits and. feelings." The third letter treats of legal and financial matters springing from Jarvis' divorce, primarily the sale of jointly owned land. The other letters continue with news of the ongoing and troublesome divorce proceedings, his children, business matters, and religion, at one time querying "Is Unitarianism the purgatory through which Puritanism is to be converted into unspotted Catholicity?" The letters present a vivid picture of life in New England in the decades before the Civil War, social, political, and ecclesiastical.