By Scarlett Hoey
Director, Wayland Museum
“O dear! I do get so tired with the children — both mind and body are so tired,” wrote local diarist Amanda Elizabeth (Patch) Baldwin in 1871. Her words still resonate in 2025 with working parents and caregivers.
Baldwin’s diary from Jan. 1 to July 23, 1871 examines a range of emotions and actions related to caregiving, religion, chores, and community. Its themes can be found in parenting guides and social circles today. A transcribed diary is one example of the many objects at the Wayland Museum which can be viewed through the maternal lens.
As we celebrate Mother’s Day in May, it seems appropriate to celebrate maternal objects in the archives. While Amanda Baldwin’s diary gives a voice to her personal thoughts on parenting and tasks, physical artifacts in the collection such as heavy 19th-century quilts and family photos help contextualize the time and effort required for family management, chores, and child-rearing in the 1870s.
Nearly 20 years before moving to Old Sudbury Road and 40 years before Baldwin wrote her diary, Lydia Maria Child dedicated her book to mothers in 1831. Her dedication reads: “To American Mothers on whose intelligence and discretion the safety and prosperity of our republic so much depend.” While not a mother herself, the book was full of advice geared towards her Victorian audience with chapters on Bodily Senses in Infancy, Religion, and Management.
In the Playthings – Amusements chapter, Child writes, “The letters of the alphabet on pieces of bone are excellent. I have known a child of six years old teach a baby-brother to read quite well, merely by playing with his ivory letters.” While the Historical Society Museum does not have any ivory letters, the second-floor Toy Room features many historical childhood games. These toys, alongside Child’s writings and other documents, provide an opportunity to delve deeper and consider parenting and childhood-development over time.
The museum archives contain records of “The Mothers’ Club of Cochituate and North Natick (c.1920), founded to “help solve mothers’ problems and to promote sociability among the mothers of the community.” Program pamphlets show the group explored topics on: “Teaching through pictures and stories,” “What We Do and When We Do It,” “Do Your Children Play or Go to the Movies?” and “The Training of Children in Religion.” Similar community groups are still around today and continue to explore concepts of caregiving, religion, chores and community–topics timelessly explored in Baldwin’s diary and Child’s book, too.
The museum collection offers many ways to consider the evolving role of mothers in our shared Wayland history. If you have a connection to any of the above-mentioned artifacts or Wayland’s past through a maternal lens, please email me: director@waylandmuseum.org.
