1866

A double-exposure photograph that was meant to depict what occurs during a séance.

In the first full year following the Civil War, Lucinda Chapin’s 20 year old daughter Hannah Elizabeth wed farmer Thomas Daggett in Champaign. The newlywed pair subsequently relocated to Maine.

Harriet (McNeil) Pepple wrote to her niece (most likely Marcia) in 1866 to update her on the changes her family experienced in Toledo, Ohio since the war concluded. She also informs her niece of the medical ailments afflicting their family. Harriet’s children–who had contracted whooping cough–and her cousin Helen underwent a type of eye surgery called a blepharoplasty. This procedure was usually done to correct vision issues caused by sagging eyelids and was still somewhat novel for the time, undergoing a series of refinements throughout the course of the 19th century.

Harriet also mentions the presence of a Spiritualist preaching on her street. Spiritualism and its practitioners became increasingly popular during the Civil War. Given the tragic quantity of loss and human suffering, family members grief was often softened by Spirtualist’s claims that they could help contact the departed. Alongside allegedly metaphysical practices such as performing seances, Spiritualists formed their own churches and were oftentimes staunch advocates of abolition and women’s rights (Lause 2016).