We are coming up on the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. I thought I would introduce my 150th Series, which is a series of blog posts that will describe events paralleled with the appropriate anniversaries. Sometimes the blog posts will be about Fanny and Lawrence. Sometimes they will not. They will, however, show you the war through the eyes of the people who lived it, not just dry statistics and military maneuvers.

On the left, there is a contemporary painting by Dale Gallon depicting Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain standing behind his seated wife, Fanny. There is a hint of anxiety in her pose as she fidgets with her wedding ring and holds a handkerchief. Lieutenant Colonel Chamberlain stands tall, as if expecting the war to be the greatest period of his life. This is an entirely accurate representation, in my opinion, of the state of the Chamberlain marriage as the newly commissioned Lieutenant Colonel Chamberlain was preparing to leave civilian life for combat and command.

But we're jumping ahead. He was not commissioned until the summer of 1862 even though President Lincoln's call for volunteers went out in the spring of 1861.

So why did Chamberlain wait so long to volunteer?

In April of 1861, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was 32-years-old, turning 33 in September. He had been married to Fanny since 1855 and he had been working as a professor at Bowdoin College since 1856. They had four children in those six years together, although a son died as the result of premature birth in 1857 and a daughter died of scarlet fever in 1860, having not even reached her first birthday. Needless to say, the Chamberlain family was quite young and utterly dependent on him for survival, despite Fanny's premarital offers to continue teaching music to supplement his weak college income. The joy of beginning their family from 1855 - 1861 was quite dampened by the deaths of two children, several of Fanny's relatives, and the tragic death of Lawrence's younger brother, Horace, later on December 7, 1861. So while the young Chamberlain family grew, a dark cloud hung over them at the beginning of the Civil War.

Chamberlain felt the pull to enlist but resisted due to pressure from his family and Bowdoin. His father felt that the rebellion in the South had nothing to do with their life in Maine and began the war from a decidedly antiwar standpoint. His wife had long endured their separations throughout their nearly decade-long relationship and had no interest in sending a husband off to war while she raised their small children alone. As for Bowdoin College, some of the upperclassmen enlisted immediately upon Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers and the college itself organized companies like the Bowdoin Guard and the Bowdoin Zuaves. The college fought Chamberlain on his enlistment and dangled a career promotion that he wanted in order to try and keep him in Maine.

And so, as Chamberlain watched the news reports come in of the shots fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, he remained safely ensconced at home in Brunswick, Maine. He watched 1861 progress from afar, drift into 1862, and he awaited his opportunity to defend his country. In doing so, he knew it would strain his marriage, upset his family, and possibly cost him his job, but he could not ignore his conscience as long as his students were fighting and dying in the field. Eventually, he would get his way....

Fanny Chamberlain, ca. 1862.

Welcome to Fanny's Parlor: The 19th Century Brought to Life.

I was inspired to create this blog because every time I talked about life in the 19th century, people always wanted to know where they could find more information. I'm a teacher by nature and I believe in teaching through giving people things they can relate to and that makes history less of a dry odyssey through dates and names that mean nothing to most people now.

I chose to call this blog Fanny's Parlor after a nineteenth century woman by the name of Fanny Chamberlain. (Most of you who know me already know about her.) Born in quite humble beginnings, Fanny rose to become an artist living on her own, a music and voice teacher, a college professor's wife, onto a Civil War general's wife, the First Lady of Maine, and a college president's wife. She led a unique life for nineteenth century standards and witnessed things that most of her peers never dreamed of in their own lives.

Fanny was known in her lifetime for inviting students of Bowdoin College and people in the town of Brunswick, Maine, into her home for parties and social gatherings. She helped the students with their problems and cared for them so much that the habits were mentioned in her eulogy. It was said: "Then to the time Mr. Chamberlain was made president of Bowdoin College when she was still 'the same little Fannie Adams,' and the students came to her with their joys and sorrows, wrong doings and love affairs. Whatever happened, she always took the part of the student, being almost a mother to them." It was also said of her: "Mrs. Chamberlain had a fund of funny stories and of quaint sayings. She was young and bright in spirit, even to her last. She was cultured and intellectual and an artist in painting as well as in music. But better than all her versatile talents was her dear, true strong, loving heart."

She is the namesake of this blog and the point of reference for the things taught here. No subject will be off-limits. There will be everything from humor to seriousness, birth to death, Victorian oddities, sex, love, marriage, careers, fashion, architecture, furniture, incorporating Victorianisms into the present, and everything in between. In the spirit of Fanny's "fund of funny stories and of quaint sayings," this blog will be anything but a dry historical reference.

I hope to see all of you here in the evolution of Fanny's Parlor.