There is a house on Main Street in Stockbridge that is interesting in many ways. First, it is a fine house. It is the house of a gentleman—large, airy, and well appointed. Second, the gentleman was Theodore Sedgwick (1746–1813). He built it in 1785, the year he moved his family from Sheffield. Third, a member of the household when they moved was Elizabeth Freeman. Fourth, the house was steps down the road from the tavern and inn of the Widow Bingham.
The house was set back, but for all its beauty and the good intentions of those who laid the Stockbridge roads, there was a problem. The street laid out on the plain—and, therefore, first called Plain Street—had the makings of a European boulevard. It was wide (approximately 130 feet) and lined by trees. There ended any similarity to a beautiful street. There were no sidewalks and no pavement. The way was muddy when it was not uncommonly dusty. The horses left their marks, and a single stroll could permanently mark a man’s boots and cuffs, as well as destroy skirt hems and the thin shoes women wore. The stagecoach stopped a short block away.
Of her father, Catharine Sedgwick wrote, “When there were no steamers, no railroads, and a stage but once a week, gentlemen made their way to Stockbridge [to see him].” Sedgwick lured the best minds to Stockbridge. Guests included Aaron Burr, John Van Buren, Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, and Daniel Webster. Catharine said the conversation was “natty and jaunty and gay.”
Sedgwick was a man of means and stature. He was a lawyer, politician, and ended his career as a judge on the Massachusetts Supreme Court. What else can be confidently said of Theodore Sedgwick?
An enslaved woman, Mumbet (Elizabeth Freeman), won her freedom on August 22, 1781. Her attorney was Theodore Sedgwick.
The same year, 1781, Sedgwick helped a widow, Anna Dix Bingham, prepare a letter and an appeal to the court to allow her to become the first female taverner in Berkshire County. Bingham, too, prevailed. From 1781 to 2024, you could get a drink at the Red Lion on the corner of South and Main in Stockbridge.
In January 1773, 11 men met in an upstairs room of Col. John Ashley’s house in Sheffield. Together they wrote a declaration against British tyranny and for the rights of the people of the Colonies. Among the 11 was Theodore Sedgwick.
He was a major in the Revolutionary War and fought at the Battle of White Plains. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress with John Adams. Clearly, he supported what were radical causes in his day: abolition, women’s rights, and revolution. Or did he?
In 1777, then-31-year-old Sedgwick bought a 30-year-old female slave from General John Fellows in Sheffield. His daughter Catharine opposed abolition, fearing it would lead to civil war and destroy the Union.
Sedgwick had a hand in writing the Sheffield Resolves by which, it is claimed, our Constitution was influenced. And yet, he represented William Vassall, a staunch loyalist who sought asylum during the war. Sedgwick brought an equity case against the state of Massachusetts to win back homes and land the state confiscated during the war. Against the wishes of his children, Sedgwick married Vassall’s niece.
Sedgwick was a deep admirer of John Adams and yet ended by writing that Adams was “vain, jealous, and half frantic mind … a man ruled by caprice alone.”
At most, then, he was a man of many parts.
He was the father of Catharine Sedgwick, an internationally known and admired author of romances and moral tales. Her fame equaled, perhaps superseded, her father’s and continued to attract people like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe to Sedgwick House. Famed actress and author Fanny Kemble wrote, “Of the society that gathered summer after summer in the pleasant hills, Miss Sedgwick was the center and the soul.”
Theodore Sedgwick was a progenitor of actress Kyra Sedgwick and model Edie Sedgwick. He is buried in “Sedgwick Pie” in the Stockbridge Cemetery. His marker is the largest, positioned at the center. They say that is because if he awakes, he will only see other Sedgwicks.
What of the house? It is still occupied by a Sedgwick family member, as it has been for 240 years.
Author’s Note:
- Sheffield Resolves — 1773
- The Massachusetts Constitution — 1780
- The United States Constitution — written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in use 1789
