Guide to the Mary Eliza Hunt Carson papers, 1823-2019

Mary Eliza Hunt (1832-1905) was born in Gorham, Maine, to Mary Gould Fogg and Charles Bonapart Hunt. She was the eldest of five children and the only daughter. Her two oldest brothers died as young children. Her youngest two, Charles Oliver Hunt (1839-1909) and Henry Hastings Hunt (1842-1894) both attended Bowdoin College, the Maine Medical School, and served the Union during the Civil War.

Hunt graduated from Gorham Normal School in 1853 and then accepted a teaching position in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, leaving behind her mother, who had been widowed in 1844, and two young brothers. Despite the geographic distance, the family remained very close, with letters exchanged between Maine and Pennsylvania frequently.

In Lancaster, Mary Eliza met and later married Thomas Duncan Carson, the son of a bank president, who was able to secure Thomas a banking position in Gettysburg in March 1857. Thomas rose to the rank of head cashier (bank manager). The family lived in the center of town, in a home that also housed the bank.

During the Civil War, and especially the Battle of Gettysburg, Mary Eliza Hunt Carson became both a witness to and participant in history. She organized volunteers to manufacture bandages in anticipation of the battle that began July 1, 1863. She also attended to the wounded, including her own brother, Charles, who was injured on the first day of fighting, and hid northern soldiers from Confederates when they searched house to house, and sheltered other inhabitants of the town in the bank's vault during the battle to keep them safe. On November 19, 1863, Carson and her family attended President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address and hosted a contingency from Maine that included Governor Abner Coburn.

In 1867, the growing Carson family relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Thomas secured a postion at a large bank. In total, the family would have seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood. In 1871, their families became further connected when Charles Hunt married Cornelia Carson, Thomas's sister. Carson died on November 7, 1905, and is buried at Laurel Hill Cememtery in Philadelphia.

Collection includes more than 400 letters (1823-1905, bulk 1850s-1905) of Hunt and Carson family correspondence, most centered on Mary Eliza Hunt Carson (1832-1905). There is a substantial number of letters written by Mary, from her home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the years of the Civil War to her mother Mary G. Hunt in Gorham, Maine, providing news about Mary's two brothers, Charles O. and Henry H. Hunt, both soldiers serving the Union, her perspectives on day-to-day life during the War, as well as her eyewitness accounts of key Civil War events, such as President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Also includes: Mary E. H. Carson's scrapbook, 1881, with a portrait photograph of her and newspaper clippings of topical interest; a photograph of Mary G. Hunt (mother), Mary E. H. Carson, Mary Carson Parkhurst (daughter), and Mildred Hunt Parkhurst; a published Account of the Complimentary Dinner given by the Past and Present Medical Officers of the Maine General Hospital to Dr. Charles Oliver Hunt on his Retirement from the Superintendency of the Institution, 1902, inscribed to "Mary E. Carson from Brother Charles, 1905"; a volume of handwritten transcriptions of Henry H. Hunt's Civil War correspondence, April 1863-April 1865, prepared by Susan Waugh Carson (mother-in-law); and a copy of the Bowdoin Bugle, November 1859.