Manuscripts
George L. Couch diary
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George Forby diary
Manuscripts
The early part of the diary details Forby's daily activities in mid-19th century New York, during which he visits friends, goes to concerts, sings in the choir of his church, and maintains his shop. He also meets and courts Elizabeth Dowd, whom he eventually marries. There is a considerable gap in the diary. There is an entry for August 24, 1851, with Forby still in New York, and the next entry in the diary is dated February 23, 1852, and Forby is en route to California via steamship. There do not appear to be any missing pages. Forby writes in detail of his journey, especially about his fellow passengers. His voyage takes him to Cuba, Panama, and the coast of Mexico, finally landing in California on April 1, and finds work as a painter in San Francisco. Here there is another gap in time, with no entries between November 30, 1852, and August 2, 1879, at which time Forby has been married to Elizabeth Dowd for twenty-four years, and had children, but she has passed away. He writes that he left California twenty-six years ago for lack of work. The first entry of the diary is dated January 5, 1851, and the final entered date is November 8, 1879. Included is a small scrap of paper with the writing "6/28-1824, Albany, NY, date of birth" on one side and "25 yrs old in '51" on the other side.
mssHM 16992
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George Stein diary
Manuscripts
George Stein kept this diary while on several fishing and camping trips in Washington State from 1934 to 1936. Besides diary entries about his fishing trips, Stein also includes lists of equipment needed for fishing, fly fishing, and camping, as well as details about fish flies and rods, and auto repairs he performs on his car. Also included is a "Camp Food Check List" by Stein.
mssHM 84020
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Jean L. Shanklin diary
Manuscripts
Shanklin's diary begins August 26, 1902 as she is going to begin a teaching job in Nampa, Idaho. Jean talks about the other teachers, going to teaching meetings and conventions, attending church and lectures, the weather, trips home to Ohio for the summer and trips to Oregon and Washington. While on a trip to San Francisco, she visits Cooper Medical College and Lane Hospital and talks about her late uncle Elias Cooper. Shanklin wrote several times a year in her diary and her last entry is June 1, 1915.
mssHM 72321
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Elias S. Ketcham diary
Manuscripts
Diary kept by Elias S. Ketcham of Rondout (Kingston), New York and covers the first half of 1851. Most entries are summaries of his daily activities such as work, church meetings and visits with friends in and around Rondout. Ketcham was a very religious man and the majority of his diary is about what he needs to do to become a better Christian. There is some discussion regarding his decision to leave New York and join his brothers in California. In his last entry, June 12, Ketcham writes about the preparations he has made for his trip, and his feelings of uncertainty regarding leaving his friends and family to head West to search for gold. There are several entries dated 1861, 1862 and 1868 regarding Ketcham's boarding situation
mssHM 59423
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Henry Jones diaries
Manuscripts
This collection consists of seven diaries kept by Henry Jones from 1837-1871. Jones' daily entries, often accompanied by philosophical reflections, sentiments, and opinions, begin in November 1837 and continue largely uninterrupted until the end of 1858. Entries for the year 1860 consist of only a few in December. The diary resumes in 1864 and continues until July 1870, when Jones departs for Nebraska. In his diaries, Jones' presents a detailed account of his personal life and his relationship with friends and family, along with the life of the Quaker communities in Gwynedd, Upper Dublin, Montgomery Township, and other villages in Pennsylvania. He relates information on the antebellum and Civil War era because of his frequent trips to Philadelphia, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. Also included are three cartes-de-visite: one of Henry Jones and two of Mary Yerkes Shoemaker. Jones meticulously documents the local, state, and national abolitionist meetings, conventions, lectures, including women's organizations, that Jones attended for almost 30 years. He writes about his ties with Hicksite Quaker preachers, leading non-Quaker abolitionists, and social reformers, including Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and John Mercer Langston. He describes political meetings and conventions between 1838 and 1896, including temperance meetings, festivals, the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1838, the Whig, and then Republican party nominating conventions. He reveals his opinions on economic and political issues, revivalism, phrenology, "animal magnetism," telegraph, alternative medicine, and spiritualism. He also lists books read, including the writings of Frederick Douglass, Lydia M. Child, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
mssHM 83955-83964
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Strang family diaries
Manuscripts
Series of seventeen diary volumes written by members of the Strang family between 1878 and 1910. Ten of the diaries were written by Alice Margaret Strang in Los Angeles, California, from 1895-1910, when she was between the ages of twelve and twenty-seven. Her nearly daily diary entries focus on her family, friends, school attendance, church and religious activities, and travel by train to the east coast (to the World's Fair in St.Louis in 1904 and to a church conference in Pittsburgh in 1909). Alice also includes references to various political events, including the outbreak of the Spanish-American War (1895-1901 diary), the election of William McKinley (1895-1901 diary) and a series of entries on his assassination (1901-1902 diary), the death of Queen Victoria (1895-1901 diary), the inauguration of William Howard Taft (1909 diary), and the bomb attack on the Los Angeles Times building (1910 diary). Five of the other diaries were written by Alice's father Robert Edwin Strang between 1876 and 1909 in Marshalltown, Iowa, while traveling throughout the eastern United States, and in Los Angeles. His diaries focus on expense accounting and his daily activities, and his 1876 diary recounts in detail his travels through Cincinnati, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, including detailed descriptions of the Smithsonian Institution and other landmarks in Washington, D.C. There is also a single diary written by Alice's mother, Harriet Lemert, in Marshalltown from 1878-1879 and which includes comments on her daily activities. Also included with the collection is an autograph book belonging to Robert Strang (1876-1878), which includes entries from friends in Iowa, New York, Colorado, and Ohio, and two photographs of Alice Strang (one taken c.1900 and the other around the time of her marriage in 1910). All of the volumes are bound.
mssHM 73035-73053