RECOLLECTIONS OF A JOURNEY FROM SIDNEY, ME. TO KNOXVILLE, TENN. COMMENCED ON THE 21st OF SEPTEMBER 184[8]. [caption title] WITH, AN ACCOUNT OF HER TIME TEACHING AT EAST TENNESSEE FEMALE INSTITUTE, 1848-1850 by Merrill, E[unice] S. (ca.1822-1891) - 1850

[Various places, but primarily Knoxville], 1850. Small quarto. [76]pp., approx. 12,000 words. Original quarter morocco and marbled boards. Spine worn with some chipping and loss, corners worn. Leaves loosening. Contents clean and highly legible. Eunice Merrill's engaging manuscript journal of her travel from Maine to Knoxville to begin a teaching job at the East Tennessee Female Institute. The first segment of her journal, some 16pp., records the arduous journey through the backcountry South. [Although the caption title records the commencement of her journey as Sept. 21, 1849, it is clear from subsequent dates in the manuscript that she meant 1848]. The next, approx. 60pp. describe her impressions of Knoxville, her two years as a teacher, sojourns in the area to plantations and camp meetings, with many pertinent observations of the social culture and life in antebellum Appalachian Tennessee.
Originally founded as "Knoxville Female Academy" in 1827, the school was rechartered as East Tennessee Female Institute in 1846 with the ability to confer degrees on its students. Presided over by Rev. David R. McAnally, it drew pupils from all parts of the United States. "Prior to the 1850s, teachers in Tennessee came from Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, or northern states where they were trained to teach. Mrs. Louisa E. Walker Parkes, a former student at the Franklin Female Institute, said that 'hiring teachers from the North was the 'in thing' to do in those days.' At first northern teachers were accepted in southern schools, but as the divisiveness over slavery grew, the cultural and class differences caused alienation. By the 1850s, most southern administrators and parents wanted only southern teachers." [see: Jennifer Core and Janet Hasson's essay " Female Education and the Ornamental Arts in Antebellum Tennessee," published in the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Vol. 40, 2019.] Eunice Merrill arrived in Tennessee to begin her teaching career at a moment of change. Leaving her hometown of Sidney, Maine on Sept. 21, she records that her cousin Caroline asks her not to go: "But she was mistaken the Southern country I shall see before I see her again that is very sure...." Miss Merrill travels from Maine to New York City, then to Charleston by boat, accompanied by a Mr. Means who was to see her all the way to Tennessee. On board the "Northerner" to Charleston she notes that it "is fitted out with sails which she can use when the wind is fair. All kinds of live stock make up her cargo, birds, alligators and emigrants." Arriving in Charleston harbor on Sept. 27, she describes her first impressions of the city: "Charleston is I think rather a pretty city so far as houses, shade trees, and shrubberies can make a place beautiful. But the streets dirty enough, dust nearly a foot deep, pigs everywhere grunting and digging about."
From there she travels overland to Hamburg, South Carolina and on to Augusta: "During the whole days ride nothing interesting was to be seen it is nothing but sands, swamps, and pine barrens, all the long day. One old lady expatiated upon the worthlessness of niggers and the many trials to which housekeepers are subjected on that account. South Carolina seems to be mostly inhabited by large planters who own many slaves. Large cotton fields are to be seen and the people live mostly in the centre of their plantations and have their nigger huts all around them."
From Augusta they proceeded to 'Atalanta' stopping on the way to view Stone Mountain. Journeying on to Dalton she mentions in passing "this is the country from which our government expelled the Cherokees." From there she and Mr. Means took the direct coach for Knoxville. At one point, one of the stage drivers worried over her and the "little fellow" she was traveling with and commented that she was "not married nor nothing are you?"
Eunice Merrill arrived in Knoxville on Sept. 30 where she was introduced to the head of her school Mr. McAnally, as well as Mr. Barnes, Maj. Wallace, and Mrs. Cowan. Her "first impressions of Knoxville were not pleasing but of the people very much so. They show much attention to strangers hope they will continue to be pleased with me." On Oct. 3, Mr. Means called to bid her goodbye, as he was about to start for Panther Springs, "and now he is gone I am quite alone." She says she made her way "down to the Institute and like the place very much. It is situated on a beautiful hill just out of the city and is surrounded by trees & shrubbing."
On Oct. 6, she commenced teaching: "The school is large over 100 scholars of which I am to take charge of about thirty.... Called at Mrs. White's where I am to board." She is to share a room with the new music teacher, Caroline Muenscher. She also mentions making the acquaintance of teachers at the Knoxville Female Seminary who are likewise from the north. She spends an evening at Mr. and Mrs. Cowans and meets Mr. Estabrook, President of East Tennessee University. She records her social life in Knoxville, her worries about teaching and living in the South, and general impressions of the area. There are descriptions of weddings and other social events, the pressures of publicly examining her classes, and of fending off occasionally over-zealous suitors. There is apparently some rivalry between her Institute and the Knoxville Female Seminary. On May 1 "the pupils of the Knoxville Female Seminary are having a day of rejoicing in the grove near their new buildings. Calisthenics around the May pole crowning their Queen and all kinds of works. As they are making such a fuss we are having school as we do not think it best to join them in their amusments and eat their cake." At commencement for her school on July 26 she says her students compositions went off well and they received their diplomas, celebrating with festivities in the evening.
Eunice spends part of her summer break at Elmwood, the residence of Judge Keith, with Louisa and Elizabeth Keith and several other people. The group travels to Campbell, then Lenoir for the night, and the following day cross the Tennessee River by ferry boat: "We passed over many rail roads not mentioned in any map of the country...." Arriving at Elmwood she notes that: "[t]he great number of negroes who ran out to look at me was rather strange to me as this is the first regular plantation I ever visitied in Tennessee." [Elmwood, near Athens, Tennessee belonged to Judge Charles Fleming Keith (1781-1865), a state circuit court judge for some 47 years]. Here she saw her first mules: "I was wondering all the ride at the long ears of the horses. All thought I was joking and no one informed me that they were of another species from horses."
She returns to Knoxville at the end of August, then journeys to Panther Springs, to Sulphur Springs camp meeting, and to Mt. Nebo on the French Broad River [perhaps a reference to Nebo, NC, a Methodist campground in operation before the Civil War]. She, along with Mr. Nolan, Miss Caroline, Isaac Franklin and Miss Barton visited the new home of Maj. Franklin at Mt. Nebo, on a hill rising above the river, with a view of the Smoky Mountains, and not far from the mouth of the Nolichucky River. The farm produced 30,000 bushels of corn, along with "cotton, tobacco, wheat & fine niggers the last by far the most profitable I suppose. The Major is the greatest nigger trader in this part of the country has made his property by buying up niggers here and driving them to the far South where he sells them at an advanced price. I would that he made his money in some better way for he is a very agreeable man and wants a wife and his daughters need a good mother. He raises 1,000 hogs but these are mostly eaten up there they have so many niggers."
She returns to Knoxville at the commencement of the fall term in October 1849. She mentions that she is studying German with her roommate Miss Muenscher. She learns that one of her "suitors" (whom she discouraged) had married another young woman in the town. She attends a sermon by Mr. Bell, "the colporteur of this country" on the cause of the American Tract Society and of the numbers of people who were "destitute of the Bible." It renews her own concerns over the need for education: "What a state of destitution is this? And what great reasons is it for all to exert themselves in the cause of popular Education in the establishing of common schools in our midst. Tennessee ranks now as the lowest in point of Education in the Union except North Carolina." In November she bids goodbye to one of her students who is going home to Savannah, in west Tennessee, and regrets the loss: "it is so unpleasant the change from old pupils to new, continually changing old friends for new, old pupils for strangers but thus it ever is in this world and I must be content."
Eunice has dinner with Mrs. Myers, whose sister is a missionary in Persia, and she muses that sometimes she thinks about missionary work, "but the trials and perplexities to which many are subject would be hard for one constituted like me to endure. Many times I question within myself which I love best the cold hills of New England or the sunny hillsides of Tennessee. This might be a much more beautiful country than the North but Oh, the ignorance the destitution in short the laziness which exists everywhere." She is clearly homesick, and although she continues to work with her students, and take drawing lessons and study her German, she is beginning to think about leaving. Her last entry on June 14: "I am in doubt what to do about leaving this place for the North. There are some reasons why I do not feel as if I could possibly stay here and others why I wish to do so. It seems a long journey to start for Maine in the summer and alone but then I must go I think...."
Eunice Merrill did return to Sidney, Maine. By the mid 1850s she married George Kinsley. They are listed in the 1860 Census for Clinton, Kennebec County, Maine, with three children ages 1, 4, and 6. Eunice Merrill Kinsley died in Boston in 1891, at the age of 69.

OCLC lists two letters belonging to Eunice S. Merrill, housed at the Univ. of Tennessee. Both were written to her father Theodore Merrill from Knoxville, one dated Oct. 2, 1848, the other undated.