Full Title:Lucia Wadsworth Geography Notebook, 1794.
Collections of the Maine Historical Society
Brief Description:Lucia Wadsworth (1784-1864) was the fifth of Peleg and Elizabeth Bartlett Wadsworth's ten children. Lucia, who remained single, spent most of her life in the Wadsworth- Longfellow house on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, which her father built in 1785, and is now owned by the Maine Historical Society. Known as "Aunt Lucia," she lived in the house with her sister and brother-in-law Zilpah and Stephen Longfellow, and assisted in rearing their eight children, including the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Lucia remained in the house with her niece, Anne Longfellow Pierce, a widow, until her death in 1864.
Lucia Wadsworth’s Geography Notebook, completed in 1794, is the earliest example of schoolgirl mapping included in this exhibition. Wadsworth was only ten years old when she created her geography notebook, and throughout its pages, one can see descriptions and word maps, as well as colorful maps such as this “Chart of the Western Continent.” Like the other school children working through their geography lessons in these notebooks, Wadsworth practiced her penmanship and her spelling. Small spelling corrections, like adding an h to “Northern,” remind us that these maps were learning experiences and works in progress.
