Who else is excited about the new movie release of Little Women?! The characters in Louisa May Alcott’s timeless book have captured the hearts of readers for generations, and many were inspired by members of her own family. King’s Chapel has numerous connections to Louisa May Alcott and her family. Scroll down to learn more!
Joseph May
When she first started working here, little did Jennifer know that her favorite childhood author’s grandfather was a prominent King’s Chapel layman! Colonel Joseph May, the inspiration for Mr. Laurence in Little Women, is memorialized on a marble tablet at King’s Chapel. Written by Jennifer Roesch, King’s Chapel History Program Assistant.
Memorials surrounding these interior walls feature centuries of various King’s Chapel members, leaders, and friends. The one above you honors one of the most influential leaders of the congregation after the American Revolution, Colonel Joseph May, who was also Louisa May Alcott’s grandfather. Although he died when she was just nine years old, Colonel Joseph May (1760-1841) must have made enough of a favorable impression on her to inspire Laurie’s grandfather, Mr. Laurence, in Little Women.
In the novel and film, Mr. Laurence is a wealthy, widowed gentleman who lives with his grandson, Laurie, in a mansion next to the March family. While Laurie quickly befriends the March sisters, Mr. Laurence is first viewed as rather cold, but eventually becomes a close friend and benefactor to the family as well. He takes a special liking to Beth, who he describes as “the musical girl,” and generously gifts her the piano that once belonged to his deceased daughter.
Colonel May, like Mr. Laurence, experienced significant loss in his life. Half of his twelve children died before reaching the age of six and he was widowed twice. Also like Mr. Laurence, Joseph May was remembered as a generous benefactor in the Boston community. The second Unitarian minister of King’s Chapel, Dr. Greenwood, remarked that “[May] might be traced through every quarter of the city by the footprints of his benefactions…”
Colonel Joseph May grew up as a Congregationalist, belonging to the Old South congregation during his teenage and young adult years. He then joined King’s Chapel following the American Revolution at the age of twenty-three. In 1787, he was one of the congregants who ordained Reverend Dr. James Freeman as the first Unitarian minister, making King’s Chapel the first Unitarian church in America. May was for many years the church warden and was a life-long friend of Dr. Freeman. King’s Chapel Annals list him as “James Freeman’s most intimate friend and his constant helper.” Reverend James Freeman Clarke, the grandson of King’s Chapel’s Rev. James Freeman, further illustrates his grandfather’s close relationship with Joseph May:
“...They had stood by each other in their youth, and were growing old together, in one long unbroken friendship, -- such a friendship as comes far too seldom in this world; but, when it does come, is an encouragement to faith in all the better qualities of human nature. In commemoration of this friendship I have hung Col. May's portrait and my grandfather's together, in the room where I preserve the pictures of my family...”
Colonel Joseph May is memorialized for his dedication to the church on the above marble tablet. Louisa May Alcott, visited the Chapel with her elderly parents to see the plaque for her grandfather decades after her grandfather’s death and records this event in her journal. You can read about her visit below.
Abigail May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abigail “Abba” May Alcott, grew up attending King’s Chapel and was the inspiration for “Marmee” or Mrs. May in Little Women. We hope you enjoy this piece written by King’s Chapel History Program Educator, Lin Nulman:
Abigail May Alcott, although less famous than daughter Louisa, produced wonderful writing of her own. It offers pictures of the Alcott family and of 19th-century rural and urban New England life. She gives this picture of King’s Chapel in her journal of 1859: “For 40 years my father was…Warden of Stone Chapel. Our family were baptized, married and buried from that Altar. I have many tender sweet memories with this Church and its functionaries…”
Abba (as she was called) May was born on October 8, 1800, to Dorothy Sewall May and Colonel Joseph May. She records that she was “christened at the Stone Chapel” by its first Unitarian minister, Revered James Freeman.
A strong-willed young person, she coveted her brother’s, Samuel Joseph May, more extensive education, and he supported her goals. Samuel even encouraged her to join the household of a fellow minister to be tutored by his sister, Abby Allyn. She studied Latin, history, botany, and math, among other subjects.
Abba May met Amos Bronson Alcott in 1827. He lacked a thorough education, steady work, and money, but he had progressive ideas about the value of education. To him she could write that the patriarchy had always “kept [women] in a latitude unrecognized and oppressive…merely as objects of pleasure…created only for convenience and admiration. Let us be taught to think, to act, to teach…”
In 1828, Alcott came to Boston to run a preschool, but he refused Abba May’s offer to work with him. She countered in August by proposing marriage to him. On May 23, 1830, they were married at King’s Chapel.
Alcott was an influential thinker, and by many accounts a nice person, but an incompetent provider. By the 1840s, Abba Alcott and the children took over the financial support of the family. Despite long-term money troubles, she moved boldly forward into her new working life. Eventually she became a successful early social worker, employed by a Boston donor-funded charity to supply the urban and immigrant poor with food, fuel, and other basics.
Her sharp, vivid journal and letters attest to her fine mind and talent for words, and she encouraged these to bloom in daughter Louisa. “I am sure your life,” Abba wrote to Louisa, “has many fine passages well worth recording…Do write a little each day, dear, if but a line, to show me how bravely you begin the battle, how patiently you wait for the rewards…” The publication of Little Women ended Abba Alcott’s money struggles and fully established Louisa’s career. She died November 25, 1877. Abba Alcott is eclipsed by the fame of the daughter she encouraged and inspired, and also by Marmee, the actual name Louisa May Alcott calls her mother in her journals and the fictionalized version of her mother Louisa created in Little Women. Louisa actually referred to her mother as “Marmee” in her journals. Abigail May Alcott should be remembered for a mind, a will, and a writing talent important both to New England cultural history and to American literature.
Louisa May Alcott
When learning more about the May/Alcott connection to King’s Chapel, we were especially delighted to learn that Louisa May Alcott visited the chapel herself later on in her life! Research done by Faye Charpentier, History Program Director; written by Jennifer Roesch, History Program Assistant. Shortly after Louisa May Alcott’s mother, Abigail or “Abba,” married Amos Bronson Alcott at King’s Chapel in 1830, the newlyweds left Colonel Joseph May and the congregation behind and move to Pennsylvania. Two years later, Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) is born in Philadelphia. Bronson Alcott continued to move the family around several times during Louisa's childhood, though eventually they settled in Concord, Massachusetts which becomes the setting for her future novel Little Women. It wouldn’t be until near the end of Louisa May Alcott and her parents’ lives that they would return to King’s Chapel.
While her grandfather, Colonel Joseph May, continued to worship at King’s Chapel until his death in 1841, we have no records linking Louisa May Alcott to King’s Chapel during her childhood and young adult years. However, the publishers of Little Women, Roberts Brothers, were located about a block away from King’s Chapel on Somerset Street (now the location of the John Adams Courthouse). Perhaps growing up she may have attended her grandfather’s funeral or later on stopped by to visit the church where her mother was baptized and where her parents got married.
The only time we know the author of Little Women set foot in King’s Chapel was closer to the end of her life. In her journals and personal papers, Louisa May Alcott wrote about visiting the Chapel in 1874 with her elderly parents to see the newly installed plaque for her grandfather, Colonel Joseph May, located on the wall closest to the burying ground. She wrote:
"A tablet to Grandfather May is put in Stone Chapel, and one Sunday a.m. we take Mother to see it. A pathetic sight to see Father walk up the broad aisle with the feeble old wife on his arm as they went to be married nearly fifty years ago. Mother sat alone in the old pew a little while and sung softly the old hymns; for it was early, and only the sexton there. He asked who she was and said his father was sexton in Grandfather's time. Several old ladies came in and knew Mother. She broke down thinking of the time when she and her mother and sisters and father and brothers all went to church together, and we took her home saying, ‘This isn't my Boston; all my friends are gone; I never want to see it any more.’ [She never did.–L. M. A.]"
The “old pew” that her elderly mother sat in one last time was likely one of the pews Colonel Joseph May owned located in the center aisle, just a few rows back from the pulpit. The emotional 1874 visit to King’s Chapel certainly left a lasting mark on Abba. Three years later, her funeral was held in Concord, not at the Chapel, although King’s Chapel’s Reverend Henry Wilder Foote led the service. Louisa May Alcott described the funeral as “a simple, cheerful service, as she would have liked it.”
Just eleven years later, Lousia and her father passed away two days apart from each other and are buried with Abba at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.