Ellen's Geographical Environment

In Ellen’s time, Portland, Maine, was a busy seaport and the largest city in Maine. As today, the summers were pleasant but the winters were particularly harsh: The harbor was often frozen for days, while travel in the countryside was best made by sleigh.

Portland had a “progressive school system” for students between ages 4 and 21. Following primary school, a student could enter grammar school after an examination. However, free education for girls ended with grammar school, while boys could go on to high school.

Because Portland did not have a hospital in the 1840s, the sick were cared for at home or in the physician’s office. City statistics list a wide array of causes for death, including typhoid, putrid fever, cholera, and measles. The most common cause of death was tuberculosis. The young were particularly vulnerable and accounted for nearly half of the deaths. The average age at death during the 1840s was about 23 years, which the local paper claimed demonstrated “the superior degree of health enjoyed in Portland.”

Historian Frederick Hoyt summarized the impact of growing up in Portland, Maine, in Ellen’s time: “In many ways it was a harsh environment that could only toughen the character of those it did not break. In the words of American historian James Truslow Adams, in this setting ‘the gristle of conscience, work, thrift, shrewdness, duty, became bone.’ Other words could well be used to characterize Down-Easterners: religious fervor, a passionate search for truth, stubborn independence, Spartan toughness, resourcefulness, frugality, sturdy individualism, and a propensity to adopt and fight for unpopular causes.”

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