In May 1832 the recently married Roxanna Bowker Stowell wrote from her new home in St. Johns-bury, Vermont to Dexter Whittemore, a country storekeeper in her native town of Fitzwilliam. New Hampshire. She asked him to send split palm leaf which she hoped to braid into hats and sell back to him for cash to meet family expenses. « [M]once is so very scarce and we must have some, » she wrote. Thirteen years later, fifteen-year old Mary Paul wrote her father from Woodstock, Vermont, where she was living with an aunt and uncle: « I want you to consent to let me go to Lowell if you can. I think it would be much I cannot get if I stay about here.
