Papers of Sarah Alden Ripley, 1806-1867

Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley was born on July 31, 1793, in Boston, the daughter of Gamaliel Bradford III and Elizabeth Hickling Bradford. She was the oldest of nine children and, as her mother's health was poor, was largely responsible for her siblings' upbringing. Though the family lived in Boston, Sarah spent much time in Duxbury, where her grandfather Bradford lived and where she formed a lifelong friendship with Abba B. Allyn (later married to Convers Francis, brother of Lydia Maria Francis Child). Abba's father, Dr. John Allyn, taught both girls Latin and Greek; another instructor of Sarah's was a Mr. Cummings in Boston, but much of her store of knowledge of the classics, modern languages, philosophy, botany, chemistry and astronomy she acquired on her own.

In 1810-1811 the family lived in Duxbury for a year; in 1813 they moved to Charlestown, where Gamaliel Bradford was warden of Charlestown State Prison.

When she was 16 Sarah was befriended by Mary Moody Emerson (1774-1863), Ralph Waldo Emerson's aunt and a woman of powerful intellect and religious convictions who strongly influenced her later famous nephew and her young friend Sarah Bradford.

On October 6, 1818, Sarah married Samuel Ripley (1783-1847), son of Ezra Ripley, minister of First Parish in Concord, and Phebe Bliss (Emerson) Ripley. The latter was the widow of William Emerson, Ezra Ripley's predecessor, and Mary Moody Emerson's mother. Samuel, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, became the minister of First Church in Waltham. Here the Ripleys lived for 28 years, raising seven children (one other died in infancy), educating many more in their small boarding-school for boys, and also instructing "rusticated" Harvard students.

In the spring of 1846 the Ripleys retired from what Sarah later (in a letter to her daughter Sophy) described as "that dreary passage of constant labours and homesick boys" to the Old Manse in Concord. Samuel died at Thanksgiving 1847. Sarah survived him by twenty years, during which she saw the death of her son-in-law, George F. Simmons in 1855; his brother Charles Simmons in 1862; of her daughter Ann Dunkin Loring; her granddaughter Lucia Simmons (1855-1860); her sister Martha Bartlett; and her son Ezra, killed in the Civil War in 1863. While her oldest daughter Elizabeth Ripley (called Lizzie or Arly) remained with her and the next, Mary, lived next door with her children, her son Gore moved to Minnesota; Phebe apparently taught school in various places but visited frequently; and Sophy, the youngest, lived in Milton with her husband, James B. Thayer. Ann's son, David Loring (born 1849), lived in Concord and later with the Thayers. Sarah Ripley herself died in Concord on July 26, 1867.