Katherine Sherwood Bonner Mc Dowell - The Road To Boston

The Road To Boston

The period following the Civil War saw a large number of previously wealthy young men struggling to make a living, and the young McDowell couple found the same difficulties. However, as Bonner witnessed other young husbands make positive moves towards self-support, her frustration with Edward and her strong desire to make something of herself sowed the seeds of a rebellion that was to confound and frustrate close family and friends. On September 3, 1873, when her daughter was not yet two years old, Bonner left her in the care of her mother-in-law and took a train to Boston, arriving with very little money and no acquaintances, save a literary correspondent by the name of Nahrum Capen.

Capen proved to become a firm friend of Bonner's, supporting her from the outset with contacts and finance, evidently considering her as one of his own daughters. Bonner's own father, Charles Bonner, would not communicate with his daughter in the months following her flight to Boston, and a letter from Capen to Bonner upon first meeting Katherine highlights his patronage of the young writer as well as some insights into her character and motivations; "Her aspirations were stronger than her sense of duty, that is, she felt she must first do justice to herself, to her own powers, before she could do justice to others... I have done what I feel would be right and kind in another extended to my own children...She has high aspirations - and she has been unhappy because she could not find or see the means for their development and realization."