Caroline Marsh

Caroline Marsh (Crane)

Find A Grave Memoriał ID # 23752596

She valued his work when others did not. He wrote to please her, and he called her his equal in every way. He was the first American environmentalist, George Perkins Marsh, born in Woodstock in 1801 and she was his wife, Caroline Crane Marsh, born in Berkley, Massachusetts in 1816. His work on deforestation was original and ground breaking. She encouraged him to publish as soon as possible – which he did in 1864. Her belief in his ideas made all the difference to him, and he disciplined himself to do the writing and get it out into the world. She reportedly said, “It cost me 15 years of hard work to wind you up to the writing point, and now I believe you are likely to run on without stopping for the next 15.” She even wrote his biography to document his life and contributions - until a stroke prevented her from finishing it.

This was a marriage of equals that began in 1839 and lasted more than 40 years. When he became minister to Turkey, they toured the Middle East together. She had become rather frail, but he so wanted her to participate in what he was doing that he carried her through the Temple of Karnak on the Nile River. On that same trip, they collected specimens for the new Smithsonian museum.

Fortunately, after 16 years and a Parisian doctor’s care, she recovered enough to participate more fully as a life partner.

Biographer David Lowenthal writes that her ailments didn’t stop them from doing what they relished, and “together they crossed deserts, climbed Alps, wrote books, kept open house for friends and relatives, and were assiduous diarists and correspondents.”

Caroline herself translated a German book, wrote up her experiences in Italian, and published poetry.

Without her, Marsh’s seminal environmental work might never have been launched on the international scene. His observation of the effects of deforestation and the urgent need for restoration and conservation led to a federal forest reserve system, watershed protection and a conservation program. In Vermont, Woodstock’s Mt. Tom was reforested and large tracts of land - including Camel’s Hump were preserved.

George Perkins Marsh commissioned his friend Hiram Powers to sculpt his wife’s likeness; a replica of which is now housed at the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont. And in the last year of his life, George Perkins Marsh declared that Caroline had been “my faithful and most affectionate companion, my wisest counsellor and my most efficient aid.”
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Caroline Crane was born on December 1, 1816 in Berkley, Massachusetts to Benjamin and Alinda (Briggs) Crane, and was the eldest daughter of ten children. She received her education from schools in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as from her older brothers, until the age of sixteen, when she moved to Middlebury, Vermont to live with her eldest brother, Silas, and his family. In 1837, she and her brother’s family moved to Burlington, where she taught at a local Episcopal boarding school run by Silas.

In 1839, after teaching for a short time at the school of a family friend in New York City, Caroline married George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) and returned to Burlington to live with him and his son, George Ozias Marsh. When George Perkins Marsh was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843, Caroline, her husband and his son, and her sister, Lucy, all moved to Washington D.C., with all but George Ozias remaining in the city until 1849.

Caroline lived abroad for most of the next 34 years of her life. In 1849, her husband was appointed U.S. Minister to Turkey, a position he held until 1853. During this period, the Marshes, along with George’s son, his niece Maria Buell, and family-friend Caroline Paine, traveled extensively through Turkey, Egypt, the Levant, and Southern Europe, remaining in Greece for several months in part to complete a diplomatic mission there. Caroline returned with the rest of her party to the United States in 1854, residing in Burlington once more until 1861. In that year, her husband was appointed U.S. Minister to the Kingdom of Italy, and the couple traveled to Europe that June in the company of Caroline’s niece, Caroline “Carrie” Crane.

While in Italy, the Marshes took several sightseeing trips through northern Italy, southern France, Switzerland, and western Austria. They also moved several times to stay near the capital of Italy, which moved from Turin to Florence in 1865 and then to Rome in 1873. George Perkins Marsh died in 1882 at the Marshes’ home in Vallombrosa, and Caroline returned to the United States the following year, living with her nephew Alexander Crane and other relatives until her death on October 27, 1901.

Throughout her life, Caroline suffered from several health challenges, including strokes, eye ailments, and difficulty walking and sitting for long periods without pain. Before the latter ailments were corrected through surgeries in 1866 and 1873, they hindered her ability to read and move without help, yet they did not prevent her from becoming an accomplished poet and translator or from participating in various philanthropic projects. She learned French, Italian, Swedish, and German by having others read aloud to her, which enabled her to read widely and prodigiously even during periods of near blindness.

In 1856, after mastering the German language, she translated The Hallig or, the Sheepfold in the Waters: A Tale of Humble Life on the Coast of Schleswig by Johann Christoph Biernatzki. Three years later, she published a collection of original poetry, The Wolfe of the Knoll, and other Poems, and later compiled and edited a collection of her husband’s correspondence, which she published as Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh, Vol. 1 in 1888.

During the latter years of her life, she became involved in several charitable ventures: she collected autographs from famous Italians to donate to the U.S. Sanitary Fairs, which supported sick and wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War; she served for many years in Florence as president of the board of managers of the Collegio Ferretti, an orphanage for Protestant Italian girls founded Salvatore Ferretti, and in 1876, she and her husband became the adopted parents of a Swedish toddler, Carlo Rande, who they raised as their own during their final years together in Italy.

Caroline Crane Marsh’s 17 “Italian” diaries (1861-1865) included here document the Marshes’ day-to-day lives during their time in Italy, particularly during their stay in Turin.

Topics include the American Civil War, race and slavery, Catholicism, European political and social relations, British-American political relations, Napoleon III and Second French Empire, King Victor Emmanuel II and Italian politics, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Italian nationalism, religious and funerary practices in Italy, the status and treatment of women in Italy and elsewhere, problems within and interactions between the Italian social classes, the experiences of Protestants, Jews, and rural peasants in Italy; health and medicine in Italy, Italian industries and agricultural practices, the Italian education system, the Italian language, crime and punishment in Italy, Italian fashion and etiquette, tourism and hospitality in Italy and the Alps, popular books and reading habits during the 1860s, George Perkins Marsh’s diplomatic and scholarly activities in Italy, and the everyday experiences of upper and lower-class Italians.

• Bittinger: Caroline Crane Marsh For Women's History Month
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• Caroline Crane Marsh Diary, April 8 - June 14, 1863