Henry Jones diaries

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.