Salem Women's
History and
Business Community
History and
Business Community
Caroline Plummer
Caroline Plummer (1780–1850), the daughter of the prominent physician Dr. Joshua Plummer and the cultured Olive Lyman Plummer, grew up in Salem on what is now Barton Square. A regular guest in the home that attracted “enlightened society” was the Plummers’ friend Judith Sargent Murray and her husband, the Universalist preacher John Murray. As a little girl, Caroline was a frequent visitor to the Murray homes in Gloucester and Boston, and seems to have absorbed their teachings on liberal religion, the value of education, and women’s activism.
As an adult, Caroline was described by her friend Judge D. A. White as “eminently distinguished by her intellectual gifts and graces, and her powers of conversation,” noting that “[her] absence of pretension added to the charm of her society.1 Her rich thoughts and sentiments flowed out spontaneously in appropriate language, often enlivened with genuine wit and humor. Her literary attainments, which were considerable, did not hang as ornaments on her mind to be displayed occasionally, but were so blended with her native good sense and the results of her own experience and observation, that they appeared alike natural and graceful; and what is perhaps a rarer excellence, her conversation was characterized by a high moral tone and true dignity, being as free from all scandal as it was above mere frivolity.”2
Caroline’s generosity extended to the Salem Athenæum, whose original home, Plummer Hall, her money funded through a bequest. She also left funds to start the Plummer Farm School of Reform for Boys, and to endow the Plummer Professorship of Christian Morals at Harvard University in the name of her brother Ernestus. When she died in 1845, Caroline had outlived six brothers and an infant sister, all of whom she had “regarded ...with the tenderness of parental as well as sisterly love.”3
Sources
1 D. A. White, Proceedings upon the Dedication of Plummer Hall (Salem, Mass., 1858), 61.
2 Ibid., 62–3.
3 Ibid., 61.
As an adult, Caroline was described by her friend Judge D. A. White as “eminently distinguished by her intellectual gifts and graces, and her powers of conversation,” noting that “[her] absence of pretension added to the charm of her society.1 Her rich thoughts and sentiments flowed out spontaneously in appropriate language, often enlivened with genuine wit and humor. Her literary attainments, which were considerable, did not hang as ornaments on her mind to be displayed occasionally, but were so blended with her native good sense and the results of her own experience and observation, that they appeared alike natural and graceful; and what is perhaps a rarer excellence, her conversation was characterized by a high moral tone and true dignity, being as free from all scandal as it was above mere frivolity.”2
Caroline’s generosity extended to the Salem Athenæum, whose original home, Plummer Hall, her money funded through a bequest. She also left funds to start the Plummer Farm School of Reform for Boys, and to endow the Plummer Professorship of Christian Morals at Harvard University in the name of her brother Ernestus. When she died in 1845, Caroline had outlived six brothers and an infant sister, all of whom she had “regarded ...with the tenderness of parental as well as sisterly love.”3
Sources
1 D. A. White, Proceedings upon the Dedication of Plummer Hall (Salem, Mass., 1858), 61.
2 Ibid., 62–3.
3 Ibid., 61.
