Marmee & Louisa (49 page)

May Alcott in her thirties, painted by Rose Peckham, her Paris roommate.

Drawing of Elizabeth “Lizzie” Alcott a few years before she died.

Freddy and Johnny Pratt, Anna’s sons, c. 1869, at six and three years old.

Louisa May Nieriker, May’s daughter, “Lulu,” at about age ten. Her aunt Louisa raised her after May’s death.

Louisa seated on the lawn of Orchard House in front of Abigail, Anna and her baby Freddy, and Bronson, c. 1865. This is the only surviving image of Louisa and Abigail together.

A painting of Boston in 1843. Thirteen years earlier, Abigail and Bronson were married in King’s Chapel, visible at center with columned portico.

Charlotte May Wilkinson, Samuel Joseph’s daughter and Louisa’s close cousin, as a young woman.

Abigail’s brother Samuel Joseph May, Louisa’s Uncle Sam, in his fifties, when he preached in Syracuse, New York.

Syracuse, New York, in 1852, when the Alcotts often stayed here with the Mays. The new railroad, the Erie Canal, and a floating barge are visible to the right of a brick building in the lower right foreground.

Leading abolitionists, or “Heralds of Freedom, Truth, Love, Justice,” in 1857: publisher William Lloyd Garrison at the center, surrounded by writer Ralph Waldo Emerson on top and, clockwise, lawyer Wendell Phillips, legislator Joshua Reed Giddings, Rev. Theodore Parker, politician Gerrit Smith, and Abigail’s brother Rev. Samuel Joseph May.

The Mill Dam and Boston’s Back Bay in 1860, two years after Louisa stood on the banks of the dam, contemplating suicide.

Louisa in her early fifties, after her mother’s death, when she and Anna were raising Anna’s two sons and May’s daughter.