The Sanborn, Cram, and Perry Family correspondence collection, 1834-1884

JOSEPH LEAVITT SANBORN (1843-1873)

Joseph L. Sanborn is a major recipient of correspondence in this collection. He was born in Hampton Falls in 1843 and later was a student of classics and English literature at Harvard College in 1860’s. He was a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts and spent summers and vacations in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. His parents were Lydia Leavitt and Aaron Sanborn of Hampton Falls. He had six brothers and sisters: Jeremiah, Charles Henry (Dr.), Sarah Elizabeth, Helen Maria, Franklin Benjamin, and Lewis Thomas Sanborn. Joseph L. Sanborn married Josephine in 1872 and died shortly thereafter in 1873. Joseph and Josephine had two daughters, Josephine Leavitt and Esther Lakin.

FRANKLIN BENJAMIN SANBORN (1831-1917)

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn is an important author of letters in this collection. He was born in Hampton Falls in 1831 and died in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1917. He moved to Concord, Massachusetts shortly after his graduation from Harvard College in 1855. He was a well-known journalist, social reformer, and abolitionist. He wrote valuable biographies and collections of Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo, Emerson, W. Ellery Channing, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. Sanborn’s editions and histories kept Transcendentalism ideas alive and translated the ideas into social action. He also taught at the Concord School of Philosophy along with A. Bronson Alcott.

RALPH ADAMS CRAM (1863-1942)

Ralph A. Cram lived from 1863 to 1942. He is a major author of letters in this collection. He was an architect and cultural critic and was also born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. Ralph A. Cram was the son of William Augustine Cram, a Unitarian minister, and Sara Elilzabeth Blake. He had no formal training after finishing high school in 1880. Instead he got an apprenticeship with the architectural firm of Rotch and Tilden in Boston, Massachusetts during the 1880’s. Most of the letters Ralph Cram has authored in this collection are from Boston when he held this apprenticeship. The rest of his architectural education was through extensive travel abroad financed through prizes won in architectural competitions and volumes of personal reading. Later Ralph A. Cram formed the architectural firm of Cram, Wentworth & Goodhue in 1895 and it later became Cram and Ferguson. In 1900, Ralph A. Cram married Elizabeth Carrington Read in New Bedford, Massachusetts. They had three children: Mary Carrington, Elizabeth Sturdwick, and Ralph Wentworth. Ecclesiastical architecture was Cram’s true vocation and he converted and built many Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Catholic churches using the French Gothic style. Later Ralph A. Cram served as the head of the Architecture Department at MIT from 1914-1921.

WILLIAM AND ELIZABETH CRAM (m. 1862)

William Augustine Cram (b.1837) was a Unitarian minister who married Sarah Elizabeth Blake (b. 1840) in 1862 in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. They had three children Ralph Adams, Marion Blake, and William Everett and continued to live in Hampton Falls. William Cram had made an early career decision to abandon the ministry and return to the family farm in New Hampshire to take care of his elderly parents, Joseph Cram and Sally Sanborn. William and Elizabeth Cram are major recipients of letters from their son Ralph and many other friends.

PERRY FAMILY

A group of correspondence included with the Cram and Sanborn Family is that of the Perry Family. John O. Thankful Perry is a major recipient of letters in this section of the Finding Aid. John Perry lived in Woodstock, Connecticut where he was most probably a farmer. He had five children: Adda O., Ann, Emily, Francis, and Samuel. These children wrote many letters to each other during 1847-51.