Diaries, Reminiscences, and Journals

Obviously cliometrics, as practiced by these scholars, produces conflict­ing conclusions just as often as traditional historiography. (For a discus­sion of the debate among professionals as to the nature of colonial Con­necticut society, see above, in the “Colonial” section.) The level of sophis­tication required to understand such works is beyond most of the unin­itiated, who need lucid descriptive accounts of daily life in former times. The best way to learn about the olden days is to read olden diaries and journals. A number of these are listed in the appropriate chronological sections of this work. For those wishing a larger body of such contempo­rary material, there are three bibliographies of diaries.

Forbes, Harriette. New England Diaries, 1620-1800: A Descriptive Catalogue of Diaries, Orderly Books and Sea Journals. Topsfield, Mass.: priv. printed, 1923. This includes both published and manuscript works. The location of the man­uscripts as of 1923 is given.

Matthews, William. American Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of American Diaries Written Prior to the Year 1861. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945. Includes published and manuscript works; arranged chronologically; author index.

—American Diaries in Manuscript, 1580-1954: A Descriptive Bibliography Athens: Univer­sity of Georgia Press, 1974.

Diary accounts of particular episodes or eras, such as the Civil War, are listed where appropriate. In the section on “Popular Histories,” those by Beals, Clark, and Lee are especially strong on social history. The materials below are selected for the light they throw on the life of Connecticut people going about their everyday business.

Baldwin, Simeon E., ed. “A Ride Across Connecticut before the Revolution,” Pa­pers of the NHCHS 9(1918):161-69. In September, 1770, twenty-seven-year-old Bethiah Baldwin went with her father from Norwich to Danbury to witness the ordination of her brother.

—”A Young Man’s Journal of a Hundred Years Ago.” Papers of the NHCHS 4( 1888): 193-208. Daily life of a new Yale graduate in the 1780s.

Bartlett, Ellen Strong, ed. “Extracts from the Diary of Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell.” Connecticut Magazine 5(1899)10:532-37, 11:562-69, 12:606-14. A three-part series covering the years 1777-1787 of the diary of the man who in 1818 founded what is today the American School for the Deaf, in Hartford.

Cook, Doris E., ed. “Living and Working in Central Connecticut, 1764-1845: The Journal of Elisha Miles.” CHS Bulletin 35(October, 1970)4:114-21. Selected ex­cerpts: Revolutionary War service, a typical month’s farm work in 1840 (mis­printed 1804). Niles taught the customary four-months session in Colchester for about twenty-eight winters, an extraordinary record at a time when very few male district teachers kept at it for more than three or four terms.

Dexter, Franklin B., ed. The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles. 3 vols. New York:

Scribner’s, 1901. This is the most cited work of the Revolutionary era. Stiles was president of Yale, 1778-1795, and met, conversed, or corresponded with nearly everyone of importance in his day. The Diary is fun reading and tre­mendously informative. What Stiles called his “Itineraries” were also edited by Dexter as Extracts from the Itineraries and other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916.

“The Diary of Joshua Hempstead of New London ... 1711-1758.” New London County Historical Society. Collections 1(1901). This is the son of the man who built the Hempstead House in New London in 1678. Read the Diary and visit the house.

Hoxie, Frances A., ed. “William Rowland Celebrates the Fourth of July.” [in 1850] CHS Bulletin 23(July, 1967)3.

Lathrop, Cornelia Penfield, ed. “The Diary of Thomas Wheeler,” in her Black Rock Seaport of Old Fairfield, Connecticut, 1644-1870. New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse, and Taylor, 1930. Some very nice stuff in the era of the War of 1812.

Mather, Annie Kelsey, ed. “John Grave: His Booke—The Diary of a Connecticut Citizen in 1679.” Connecticut Magazine 10(1906)1. Grave was from Guilford. Entries run from 1678 to 1802.

Miner, S. H., and Stanton, G. D., eds. Diary of Thomas Minor of Stonington, 1653-1684. New London: New London Historical Society, 1899. Minor, one of the founders of New London, arrived in the Arabella at Salem in 1630. Be patient; it is not easy to read or pick out the interesting details, but it is worth the trouble.

Miner, Frank D., and Miner, Hannah, eds. The Diary of Manasseh Minor, Stonington, 1696-1720. New London: New London County Historical Society, 1915. Includes a biographical introduction to this sixth son of Thomas. Half-line entries for about half the days each year. It will take some educated imagi­nation and a lot of inspired inference to draw generalizations from this work, but historians can do it. There is a discussion of whether the name should be spelled with an e or an o on pp. 187-88. Also a discussion of the Indian wars by the editors. Indexed.

Morgan, Helen M. ed., A Season in New York, 1801: Letters of Harriet and Maria Trumbull. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969. Though the letters were written from New York to Lebanon, the governor’s daughters, age fifteen and seventeen, provide much insight into Connecticut society. Morgan’s in­troductory essay says a good deal, too.

Moseley, Laura Hadley, ed. The Diaries of Julia Cowles. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931. Charmingly presents the impressions of a young teenager (b. 1785) from 1797 to 1803.

McArthur, Jean, ed. “Lebanon Farmer in the 1830s.” CHS Bulletin 30(January, 1965) 1:18-25. Long, fascinating excerpts from letters; observations by a farm­er-school teacher on life and manners.

Spears, John K. Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer: An Old-Time Sailor of the Sea. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Reminiscences of life in Stonington, where Palmer (1799-1877) grew up in and around his father’s shipyard.

Tarbox, Increase N., ed. Diary of Thomas Robbins, D.D. 1796-1854. 2 vols. Boston:

T. Todd, 1886-87. The author was minister in South Windsor for twenty years, 1807-1827, and then in Massachusetts. This is a magnificent repository of in­formation of all sorts: agriculture, weather, political bits and pieces. But you must plough through two huge volumes.

Another category of what are in fact primary sources is made up of reminiscenses and autobiographies. Many of these are included in the “Biographies” section at the end of this bibliography, but some are listed here. We have made no attempt at comprehensiveness but offer only a small section of the vast library of such works on the shelves of our major repositories. They are most useful for what their authors did not intend to tell: the social and moral values that are expressed only implicitly.

Dwight, Timothy. Travels in New England and New York. 4 vols. Edited by Barbara Solomon. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. See under Guides, above.

Gay, Julius. “Social Life in Farmington Early in the Century.” In his Farmington Papers. Farmington: Case, Lockwood and Brainerd, 1900. Gay tells of romance at the district school, dull church services, etc. in the early years of the nineteenth century.

Goodrich, Samuel. Recollections of a Lifetime. Check the index for location of anno­tation.

Hayden, Jabez H. Historical Sketches Windsor Locks, Conn.: Windsor Locks Jour­nal, 1915. Seventh generation to live in the area since 1635. The author, born in 1825, writes of early mail facilities, slavery, old county milestones, etc.

Ives, Franklin Titus. Yankee Jumbles: or Chimney Corner Tales of the Nineteenth Cen­tury. New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1903. This is an amusingly written ramble through Connecticut in the early nineteenth century by a man who re­members those days many years later. Don’t take him too seriously, but read between the lines.

Kidder, Mrs. Harriet Smith. “Reminiscences of Winchester.” Edited by William J. Chute. CHS Bulletin 29(January, 1964)1:9-16. Sketches written from mem­ory in 1892,when Mrs. Kidder was a very old woman.

Mitchell, Donald G. My Farm at Edgewood. New York: Scribner’s, 1863. This is Ik Marvel, a popular writer of the late-nineteenth century, reminiscing about his life in New Haven. A romantic gentleman farmer describing his idealized farm, sometimes with tongue in cheek. Descriptions of physical features, farm­ing activities. But he does go on.

Muzzy, Florence E. D. “A New England Childhood . . . Memories.” Connecticut Magazine 9(1905)3-4. Excellent material on mid-nineteenth-century schools, with some discreet peeks at childhood romances. Bathing suits were unknown; the girls swam in old dresses and slept on straw in the summer cottage on the Thimble Islands.

Peet, Martha Denison. CHS Bulletin 11(January and April, 1946)1:1-8, 2:9-16. A charming first-person account of life in Stonington about 1805; written in her old age.

Shepard, Odell. The Harvest of a Quiet Eye: A book of Digressions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927. A pleasant, chatty account, with reminiscences, of a walk through northern Connecticut hills. Romantic sketches of people and places.

Sigourney, Lydia Howard. Sketch of Connecticut Forty Years Since. Hartford: D. D. Cooke and Sons, 1824. The forty years begins in 1784. This is full of informa­tion and insight if readers will be patient with the prolix Victorian prose. Mrs. Sigourney knew everyone in America who had anything to do with the arts.

Stanton, Henry B. Random Recollections. New York: Macgoen and Slipper, 1885. “This production is neither a history, a biography, nor an autobiography, but is exactly what it professes to be namely ‘random recollections’ of the writer,” writes Stanton, who was born in Jewett City in 1805 and lived in Connecticut till 1826. Much interesting material.