Sarah Orne Jewett House

Olive Grant

Olive Grant was the local dressmaker, who apparently knew quite a bit about what went on in town. Sarah was amused, and perhaps inspired, by Olive Grant’s stories, and her quaint way with a phrase or saying. “‘It takes everybody to know everything!’ she said once in quite her brisk old way…” (MS Am 1743 (255), Houghton Library Harvard University)

 

Like Sarah and Mary Rice Jewett, Olive Grant did not marry; however, she was not financially independent of the need to marry, as the Jewett sisters were. Olive Grant was supporting herself and her illegitimate daughter through work. Sarah Orne Jewett wrote in one letter to Annie Fields about having Olive Grant make clothes for her, and that she thought Miss Grant needed the money.