Mary C. Pratt

The Wayside house where Mary C. Pratt operated her boarding school.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

Mary C. Pratt operated a boarding school at the Wayside house from 1871- 1879. As an unmarried New England woman, Mary defied 19th century cultural norms by making her own living. Although little documentation exists about Mary’s life, the fragments we do have bring to light the experiences of late 19th century New England women.

Place of Birth:

Cohasset, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

June 3, 1831

Date of Death:

1918

Place of Burial:

Cohasset, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Cohasset Central Cemetery

Forgotten Women of the Wayside:

 

One of the lesser-known residents of the Wayside is Mary C. Pratt, who ran a boarding school in the house from 1871 to 1879. Little scholarship on her exists, and what can be found is spread out through census records, birth and death certificates, and hints in newspaper articles. While some may not find Pratt as prestigious as a Hawthorne or a Lothrop, what details can be found about her life are fascinating, and suggest a woman whose memory is just as valuable as any Wayside celebrity.

Pratt was born on June 3, 1831 in the port town of Cohasset, Massachusetts.¹ Her father, Captain Peter Pratt, was a mariner² with four children from a previous marriage³ ; her mother, Mary Roulstone of Boston, was 16 years his junior.⁴

Not much could be found concerning Pratt’s childhood. Her parents had two more daughters; Charlotte (born in 1833)⁵ and Georgiana (1837-1838).⁶ The family does not appear to have left Cohasset before Peter’s death in 1851.⁷ Pratt herself never married; however, Charlotte married James O. Josselyn of Virginia in 1853,⁸ and welcomed a daughter named Ida two years later.⁹

The family seems to have moved around a great deal in the intervening years. The 1860 census places Pratt, her mother, and Ida in a boarding house in Braintree, Massachusetts.¹⁰ By 1870, however, Pratt was “teaching private school” in Charlestown, New Hampshire. The 1870 household consisted of Pratt, her mother, a teacher, a servant, and five students, including Ida.¹¹ A report by the Department of Education suggests that Pratt founded the school in 1866.¹²

Pratt’s involvement with the Wayside began in 1871, when she leased the house from Abby Gray and moved her school there, christening it the Wayside Family School. She bought the home officially in 1873.¹³ According to an article in the Concord Freeman, Pratt had been attracted to Concord’s “literary advantages,”¹⁴ and so fittingly set up her school in the former home of the Alcotts and Hawthornes. Most of the pupils were girls, but a few boys were welcomed, including the sons of Anna Alcott Pratt (no relation to their teacher).¹⁵ The Alcotts’ association with the school does not end there. Before the school opened, Bronson Alcott would guide visitors on tours of Hawthorne’s former home¹⁶ ; now, he took an active role in school events. An entry in one of his journals describes “meet[ing] the young ladies at the Wayside and tell[ing] them something about Hawthorne, Thoreau and Louisa.”¹⁷

The school was prestigious, serving “the best families in New England,” and was “very select.”¹⁸ Contemporary articles from the Concord Freeman¹⁹ and other newspapers bear up this point. The school was said to house “budding misses”²⁰ who “perpetuated the tradition of refinement and cultivation earlier fostered by the Alcott and Hawthorne families.”²¹ The 1874 graduation ceremonies boasted several prominent speakers, from Bronson and May Alcott to Ralph Waldo Emerson.²² The Concord Freeman describes it as an elegant scene:

“The lawn adjoining was hung with chinese lanterns, and provided with seats, also a stand for music… eight of the young ladies entered the lawn… over their heads waged the spreading branches of oak, and under their feet was a carpet of soft green grass.”²³

The Wayside Family School closed down in 1879, when Pratt sold the property to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s youngest daughter Rose Lathrop with the plan to move her school to Belmont, Massachusetts.²⁴ Indeed, the 1800 report of the Commissioner of Education lists her as the principal of the “Family School for Young Ladies” in Belmont²⁵ , and the 1880 census places her there with her mother and a servant, running a “day school and keep[ing] boarders.”²⁶ She does not, however, appear to have lived there long; city directories and censuses as well as the mortgage papers from Daniel Lothrop’s purchase of the Wayside place her on Warren Street in Needham, Massachusetts by 1889, unassociated with any school.27

The final record of Mary C. Pratt before her death is the 1910 census, which places the 79-year-old Pratt in Needham with Mary Cunningham, a maid.²⁸ Pratt died in 1918, at the age of 87, and is buried in Cohasset Central Cemetery with her family.²⁹

These are the details that exist; what Pratt herself was like, her personality, hopes, and dreams, are all speculation. She appears to have supported her mother until the latter’s death in 1883.³⁰ Like Louisa May Alcott, she remained unmarried and made her own living, an unusual path for a woman of her time. And yet, her school seems to have trained young, rich girls to take the traditional feminine roles expected of them, if the Concord Freeman articles are any indication. What may this suggest about Pratt’s life and beliefs? Could she, like Alcott, have chafed against expectations of women, and started her school to make her own way in life? Or did she teach out of necessity, to support her mother after her father’s death? What was her life like during the Civil War in her thirties? How would she have reacted to issues such as Reconstruction and women’s suffrage? Sadly, all of this remains unknown. However, in gleaning what information we can, we can preserve a fragment of the memory of this forgotten woman of the Wayside.

Sources

¹Mary C. Pratt, birth record, 3 June 1831, available in “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988” s.v. “Mary C. (Mary Caroline, C.R.I.),” Ancestry.com.
²Peter Pratt, death record, 25 July 1851, available in “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988” s.v. “Captain Peter Pratt” (1784-1851), Ancestry.com.
³Peter Pratt and Family, grave marker, Cohasset Central Cemetery, Cohasset, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Peter Pratt and Family,” FindaGrave.com.
⁴Mary R. Roulstone and Peter Pratt, marriage record, 21 Jan. 1829, available in “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988” s.v. “Mary Roulstone” and “Peter Pratt,” Ancestry.com.
⁵1850 United States Census, Cohasset, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Charlotte R Pratt,” Ancestry.com.
⁶Georgiana Clara Pratt, grave marker, Cohasset Central Cemetery, Cohasset, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Georgiana Clara Pratt,” FindaGrave.com.
⁷Peter Pratt, death record, 25 July 1851, available in “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988” s.v. “Captain Peter Pratt” (1784-1851), Ancestry.com.
⁸Charlotte Pratt and James Josselyn, marriage record, 5 June 1853, available in “Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988” s.v. “Charlotte Pratt” and “James O Joslyn,” Ancestry.com.
⁹Ida Josselyn, birth record, 24 Feb. 1855, available in “Massachusetts, Birth Records, 1840-1918” s.v. “Ida C Josselyn,” Ancestry.com.
¹⁰1860 United States Census, Braintree, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Mary C. Pratt,” Ancestry.com.
¹¹1870 United States Census,Charlestown, Sullivan County, New Hampshire, digital image s.v. “Mary C. Pratt,” Ancestry.com.
¹²Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1880 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882), 537.
¹³Anna Coxe Toogood, “The Wayside, Historic Grounds Report, Minute Man National Historical Park” (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Eastern Service Center, Office of History and Historic Architecture, March 1970): 70.
¹⁴ “Wayside School for Young Ladies,” Concord Freeman, 18 May 1876, as quoted in MIMA Architectural Conservator’s Research Notes (Box 3, Folder 5, MIMA Archives).
¹⁵Toogood, 1970: 71.
¹⁶Toogood, 1970: 69.
¹⁷Alcott Journal LIV, April 19, 1878, as quoted in HGR pp. 71-72 (Toogood, 1970).
¹⁸ “The Wayside,” newspaper clipping entered in Alcott Journal LIX, June, 1874, as quoted in HGR pp. 71 (Toogood, 1970).
¹⁹The full text of these articles is available in the Concord Free Public Library, but could not be accessed when this article was written due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It would be a fascinating project to study these in normal times.
²⁰ “Centennial Concord,” Appleton’s Journal of Literature, Science, and Art, 1875, as quoted in CLR pp. 25 (Dietrich-Smith et al., 2008).
²¹Toogood, 1970: 72.
²²Toogood, 1970: 71.
²³Concord Freeman article, newspaper clipping entered in Alcott Journal LIX, June, 1874, as quoted in HGR pp.138-139 (Toogood, 1970).
²⁴Deborah Dietrich-Smith et al., “Cultural Landscape Report for the Wayside Unit, Minute Man National Historical Park” (Boston: Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation, Boston National Historical Park, 2008), 27.
²⁵Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1880 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882), 537.
²⁶1880 United States Census, Belmont, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Mary C. Pratt,” Ancestry.com.
²⁷Mary C. Pratt to Daniel Lothrop, available in MIMA Lothrop Collection (Box 1, Folder 8, MIMA Archives).; Mary C. Pratt, Needham city directory, 1892, 1896, 1906, and 1915, available in “U.S. City Directories, 1892-1995” s.v. “Mary C Pratt,” Ancestry.com.; 1900 United States Census, Needham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Mary Pratt,” Ancestry.com.
²⁸1910 United States Census, Needham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Mary C. Pratt,” Ancestry.com.
²⁹Mary C. Pratt, grave marker, Cohasset Central Cemetery, Cohasset, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Mary C. Pratt,” FindaGrave.com.
³⁰Mary R. Pratt, grave marker, Cohasset Central Cemetery, Cohasset, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, digital image s.v. “Mary R. Roulstone Pratt,” FindaGrave.com.