Category: Reconstruction Diary Meditations
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Fashion Can Be A Quaker Passion
Because I’ve posted so many Sunday entries, today, I’m skipping ahead to the upcoming Wednesday in Mary Jane’s diary. For context, at the time of her writing, she and her sister Lizzie, my three-times great-grandmother, have been home in rural East Central Indiana for six weeks since returning from their first stint teaching freedmen in…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Drawing Back a Veil
Sunday, May 27, 1866 Lizzie and I went to meeting to Elmgrove. Isaac Trueblood and his daughters Miriam & Mary were there. Meeting was small. In the afternoon Milton, Lizzie & Ella Hubbard went up to a spiritual meeting at Greensboro. The speaker was Mrs. Mitchell. They enjoyed it pretty well [and] stopped at Bales’s…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Time Moves On, But Human Nature Stays the Same
From the 1866 diary that inspired my first novel: Sunday, May 20, 1866 Milton, Lizzie & I went to Elmgrove to meeting. Got there before the Sabbath school closed. I read the 46th Psalm at the close of school; several were at meeting, no preaching. After meeting we went to N Gause, took dinner, then…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Weather Delays
On Wednesdays, I try to share passages from the 1866 diary of my third great-aunt, Mary Jane Edwards, whose journal has inspired my first novel: “Tuesday, May 8, 1866 This morning we undertook washing and during the day we succeeded in gathering the clothes into the rinse. As it was rainy we did not put…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: On Waiting
Friday, April 6, 1866 We made preparations to start on our journey today at one o’clock but some accident happened to the train so that it did not come in. We waited all the evening ready to start at any time. About 7 o’clock a whistle sounded and a coachman employed to take us to…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: How to Be Stuck: A Lesson from 1866
“Wednesday, March 21, 1866 Last night we had thunder and lightning, and a shower of rain which continued through the night. I did not go out visiting this morning [or] in the afternoon. Lizzie and I went up to town and purchased some dry goods. Good calico is 23 & 30 cents per yard, lower…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Words of wisdom in stressful times – from 1866!
Sunday, March 11, 1866 We looked for the Ohio teachers on the morning train but they did not come & no word from them. We received a letter from home; they are well as usual. Change is going on among our friends & acquaintances: some are married, some are consigned to the tomb, since our…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Did my ancestor suffer from seasonal depression?
Diary Entry: Saturday, February 3, 1866 The forenoon of today has been spent making a bonnet to wear, and owing to a headache feeling unable to do much more. Anna French is better today. At two oclock an ambulance wagon came round to take us out riding and eight of our family took passage for…
-
Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Remember our farming ancestors in winter
We think we have it bad this weekend with the snowfall and frigid temperatures. But a massive winter storm – idyllic though Currier & Ives make it appear in their 1868 “American Homestead Winter” – would have been a huge challenge for my ancestors, Mary Jane and Lizzie Edwards and anyone who lived on a…
