Category: Reconstruction Diary Meditations
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Reconstruction Diary Meditations: The Music of Change and the Pages of Progress
Wednesday, July 25, 1866 We have had no rain today. The boys bound and hauled the oats. Lizzie went and took another lesson in music. David took a few dollars of silver and gold to the bank of Knightstown for me and got it exchanged. They paid 40 cents premium for gold and 25 cents…
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Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Unexpected Family Connections
Sunday, July 15, 1866 A very warm morning and day; mercury at 90; some slight indication of rain, but no rain. Milton, Lizzie, and I went to meeting, which was small. No preaching; some napping. [This] afternoon David went with Lizzie and me to George Butler’s to see Elisha and Luscinda [sic] Butler who have…
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Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Indiana Farm Summer
Tuesday, June 26, 1866 Lizzie has been too much indisposed in health to assist much in household duties. I did the ironing and cooking mostly. Mother is still gathering and canning fruit – currants and raspberries. Jonathan and Milton went to Charlottesville to look at some reaping machines. They finally concluded to get an “iron…
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Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Knowing Our Place in the World
Monday, June 18, 1866 This morning Debbie Edwards came and Lizzie went to Knightstown with her to see Mahan the Methodist preacher about musical instruments. She wishes to get a melodeon, but he is interested in the sale of cabinet organs. Mother went to see Margaret Clifford [and] found her better. I went to Solomon…
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Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Rapidly Evolving Quakerism
Sunday, June 10, 1866 Milton, Lizzie and I went to Walnut Ridge to meeting. Enos Prey was there and preached a pretty extensive sermon. E Osborn also preached. There was preaching outdoors. Also the new meeting house is quite commodious but would not contain more than half the people. Went to Joseph Butler’s for dinner.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
