of wifehood or having a traditional family attractive. Despite this choice and Dickinson's commitment to it, there were signs of both her regret and her embrace of singleness that were often reflected in her journal. Reflecting on a local newspaper in the summer of 1791, Dickinson wrote that an “old maid” who had died at the age of one hundred was given the status of “venerable”, which was a title she wanted to “live and die” by. A considerable portion of the suffering expressed within her journal came as a result of her loneliness, not necessarily a desire to have a family, but to have the sort of connections that matrimony had offered her female peers. Dickinson’s first proposal of marriage came in the winter of 1777/ 1778, through her long-time client Elizabeth Porter Phelps. Phelps’s father-in-law, Charles Phelps, was in search of a new partner after his wife had died the previous winter. The second proposal came in 1787 from an unknown person and there are no diary entries that concern this marriage proposal other than one concerning her minister's wife, Hannah Lyman, who had questioned her about changing her name. The third proposal occurred in fall of 1788 by a physician named Moses Gunn. His proposal had intrigued her the most and was the one proposal that she had genuinely considered, but she ultimately decided that she would never change her name. While Dickinson shows interest in both the single life and the married life in her diaries, her feelings grew after the death of her sister's husband when her sister had been left to raise a family alone. Whether her lifetime status of single is due to her commitment to faith or her overall disinterest in having a family cannot be proven. Whatever her reasons were, Dickinson was able to keep herself financially stable independent of a man to support her, unlike most women of the time and place, through her gown making and tailoring. Faith Throughout her life, Dickinson was deeply devoted to her life as a Calvinist. She believed that singleness was part of God's plan for her, and that it was her specific "cross" to bear. Following September 1787, Dickinson was convinced that such desires of family-life and marriage were distracting her from her devotion to God. Following this, Rebecca became even more devoted in her commitment to living a life of singlehood. In