Old Diaries Give Insight into the Everyday Life of Times Gone By

I love old diaries, especially those that have a connection with the Mohawk Valley, so I began reading the one I had just bought with great excitement. A farmer near Fort Plain, New York kept it during the year 1917. But my excitement turned to disappointment when I discovered that his most common entry was "Today I spread manure." On occasion there were different entries, but none were very interesting.

As I read, I hoped to find some reference to World War I, the most horrific war the world had ever seen up until then. 1917 was the year The United States entered the war. Troops from the Second Provisional Regiment of the New York Guard were guarding the locks on the Erie Canal against sabotage, including the one in Fort Plain. Everybody was talking about the war and singing "Over There." Everybody, except for my Fort Plain farmer. He never mentioned the war once in his diary.

At first this annoyed me. How could someone write about spreading manure when such a terrible event was going on. It reminded me of the poem, Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden, part of which reads:

"Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure..."

Should Everyday People Be Expected to Record Important Events in Their Diaries?

When there are fields to be plowed, should a Greek farmer be expected to look up and watch as a man who has attempted flight falls into the sea? Should a Mohawk Valley farmer be expected to think about the war that was to end all wars when the cows never stop eating and making manure that has to be spread on the fields?

I used to think so, but now that I have kept a diary for six years, I can better understand this diarist. It is very easy to get caught up with my own life and forget the world around me. My diaries, which I keep in those marble composition books because they will stand up on a shelf like a regular book, often don't reflect what is going on in the world, just what is going on in my world. Days go by during which I forget we have troops dying in Iraq. If you don't have someone stationed there it is easy to forget what is going on there.

Furthermore, I have begun to see the importance of spreading manure. Fertilizing the earth is an important part of the cycle of life. Without a fertile earth, we won't need a war to destroy us. Did this Fort Plain farmer realize that? I don't know for sure, but he must have thought that spreading manure was important because he not only did it almost everyday, he also recorded that he did it in his diary. Surely recording the act of spreading manure shows the how important the act was in his mind.

Most Common People Record the Mundane in Their Diaries.

Another diary that I once owned was kept by a lock tender at Fonda's Basin on the Erie Canal in the 1800s. Fonda's Basin was not in Fonda, New York but was somewhere near Clifton Park. This diary which chronicled life on the canal had more varied entries and was more interesting than the one kept by the farmer in Fort Plain. It too, however, chronicled the daily life of the lock tender. Most of his entries were about items purchased, trips to Schenectady and various mundane tasks such as splitting wood. This diary is now in the New York State Museum.

I also once owned a number of diaries kept by various members of the French family in Amsterdam. I read many of them, and they gave a fascinating insight into life in Amsterdam in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Mr. French was an accidental diarist. He confesses that the only reason he started keeping a diary was because someone gave him one for Christmas. The next year, he did not keep a journal because no one gave him one. Mr. French was a banker, yet in October and November of 1929, he never mentions the stock market crash. Like the farmer in Fort Plain, he too was taken up with his own life. In his case, however, it was not the mundane things of life that kept him from recording earthshaking events, but his own personal tragedy--the death of his sixteen year old son.

My most recent find was three diaries kept in 1882, 1883 and 1885 by a farmer named Martin Blessing near Altamont, New York. Farmer Blessing's entries were often brief, but they said a lot. For example, on February 19, 1883, he wrote, "Went over hills looked for horses." It's not hard to figure out that he meant his horses got loose, and he spent a lot of time looking for them. Except for recording the death of former President Grant, whom he referred to as General Grant, Blessing too wrote primarily of everyday life--mending fence, plowing, sowing, harvesting, cutting wood and taking produce to market.

The Future of Diaries.

Now that many people have turned from keeping diaries to blogging on the internet, I wonder how many diaries future historians and antiquarians will turn up. I will most likely leave my composition books to my daughter when I die, but to whom does one leave a blog, and how does one leave a blog? Is a blog even worth preserving?

Right now it is too early to tell, but I have already discovered one thing. Searching for and finding an on-line journal or blog is a lot less exciting than finding a handwritten diary in a barn or attic, even if the diary's primary function is to chronicle the spreading of manure.