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Article Published January 18, 1999
EAST COAST KIN (Canada)
By: Sandra Devlin, Biography & Archived Articles
Journals & Diaries - Part I
Do you keep a journal? I have written about my everyday life
sporadically ever since I was a child. But because lots of it is highly
opinionated, some entries are very personal and other parts are
potentially embarrassing to others, I had considered destroying my
journals along with some letters and keepsakes. But I had second
thoughts after I came across a handful of letters that my grandmother
wrote shortly before her death. As thrilled as I am to have these, I so
very much wish I had more of her personal writings.
I want my granddaughters and great-granddaughters to have the
opportunity to know me intimately. So now I think I will seal my private
diaries, letters and any incriminating memorabilia with specific
instructions to my survivors that the container not be opened until my
100th birthday and that they remain unpublished until 100 years after my
death.
Readers, what do you think of this idea? I encouraged you to share
your thoughts with me about how you intend to treat your own personal
belongings -- those things which will be referred to by your
descendants as "artifacts" and "primary sources" of information about
you, your family and the world in which you lived. If there is
sufficient response, your comments may be included in a future column.
Thankfully not everyone threw out their diaries. We learn a great deal
about our Maritime heritage from the diaries of bygone days which have
survived. Some of these journals are the topic of this new series of
columns.
Sarah (Scofield) Frost’s surviving diary of her Loyalist family’s
exile aboard the ship Two Sisters from New York in the spring of 1783 to
what is now New Brunswick is probably one of the best known.
Sarah opened her diary 216 years ago on May 25, with these words: "I
left Lloyd’s Neck (New York) with my family and went on board the Two
Sisters, commanded by Capt. Brown, for a voyage to Nova Scotia with the
rest of the Loyalist sufferers. This evening the captain drank tea with
us. He appears to be a very clever gentleman. We expect to sail soon as
the wind shall favour. We have very fair accommodation in the cabin,
although it contains six families, besides our own. There are two
hundred and fifty passengers on board."
The stage is set for detailing 32 more days in the life of Sarah, her
husband William and their children.
The contents are invaluable to her direct descendants, it goes without
saying. But the insights of life aboard ship and the feelings of
displacement and wariness are relevant to all United Empire Loyalist
descendants. That’s pretty much everyone in the Maritimes.
The final entry on Sunday June 29 reads:
"This morning it looks very
pleasant on the shore. I am just going ashore with my children to see
how I like it. {Later} - It is now afternoon and I have been ashore. It
is, I think, the roughest land I ever saw. It beat Short Rocks, indeed,
I think, that is nothing in comparison; but this is to be the city, they
say! We are to settle here, but are to have our land sixty miles father
up the river. We are all ordered to land to-morrow, and not a shelter to
go under."
A modest woman, Sarah never gets around to mentioning in her diary
that she is seven and eight months pregnant at the time. Baby Hannah was
born July 30.
Sarah’s diary is reprinted in a booklet, which every United Empire
Loyalist descendant should own, entitled Kingston and the Loyalists of
the Spring Fleet of 1783.
Men’s journals tend to detail facts, more than emotions -- but even
dry facts are often revealing.
At the Fort Beausejour museum in Aulac, New Brunswick the notebook of
Yorkshire immigrant William Chapman breaths life into the hurried
repairs to Fort Cumberland during the summer of 1776 made necessary by
the anticipated attack by Rebels led by Jonathan Eddy. Chapman was the
carpenter in charge of the repairs so he kept track of the weekly wages
of one pound to workers under his supervision named Anderson, Wood,
Brown and Besto.
Chapman’s notebook was started in the Old Country in 1764. Its a
handbook of everyday details: recipes, money loaned and repaid, the cost
of mending a plow and accounting of the cost of firkins of butter.
Another very early diary was written by Rev. William Drummond's from
April 5, 1770 to May 12, 1771. Rev. Drummond sailed aboard the Falmouth
from Scotland to Prince Edward Island (then St. John's Island ). The
whereabouts of the original journal is unknown, but a typewritten copy
is on file at the National Archives, Ottawa, reference number MG 23J1
Volume 1.The reverend’s first impressions of his new homeland are recorded for
posterity:
"June 1st. (1770) Proceeded at 9 to launch the yawl. Capt.
David, Will and Bell Lawson went on shore at St. Peters Bay which is
with 10 miles of Stanhope Cove. At 4 P.M. came of board and wind fair
set off towards the Cove. Night coning on and a strong current, not
knowing the particular place of landing passed it and next day arrived
at Richmond Bay."
"June 2nd. At 1 o'clock a Pilot came on board who took us into the
harbour. About 2 P.M. we came to anchor. Most of our company were sent
ashore, about 11 the ship ran aground. We went out to see them where
they were accommodated in Princetown where are a great many Scotch,
Irish and French families."
"June 3rd. Sunday. Being still at anchor at 1 P.M. the Capt. and the
rest of us went ashore, and being convened in a house we
performed divine service in Princetown."
"June 4th. Stayed on board until after dinner then went ashore where
we saw a great number of French people who were very kind. Spent
this afternoon sauntering about till about 7 when I baptized a
child of 2 years old. At 9 went to another house where the French were
convened, had a dance and spent the evening in jollity."
More than 40 years later and a province away, teenager Louisa
Collins put quill to parchment in late evenings or in the early morning
hours in 1815 and 1816.
There are so many delightful entries in Louisa’s diary, it is
difficult to cite only a few. I have settled first on the evidence of
young love (I am, after all, a hopeless romantic); second and third on
illustrations of the endless round of daily chores, the abundance of
sociability and the weather -- the three staples uppermost in the daily
lives of the pioneers at Colin Grove, on eastern outskirts of Dartmouth,
Nova Scotia.
Sunday Aug. 27, 1815: "I was quite alone, till Mr. Beamish came. We
went to the orchard and picked some currants and then we took a walk to
Mr. Russell’s Lake. When we returned, tea was ready. The fog came in
very thick, and Mr. Beamish stayed all night.... Mr. B (and another
Sunday visitor, George Coleman) has taken my bed -- I hear them snoring
famously, and I shall follow their example."
Then the following day,
Monday, Aug. 28, 1815, Louisa writes: "I have been picking currants from
nine this morning till four this afternoon. We have got a large
washing-tub full for wine. -- Since (then) I have been raking hay till
nearly night. -- Mr. Beamish and George left here very early this
morning. I did not see them. -- While I was picking currants, my
thoughts were employed with where I should be and what I should be doing
this day twelve months."
This entry was written a little more than a year before Louisa’s
marriage to her Mr. Beamish, Thomas Ott Beamish. One can read between
the lines the almost palpable, unrecorded conversation between the young
lovers Louisa, 18, and Thomas, 34, as they strolled through the orchard
and down to the lake on that summer Sunday discussing their plans to
marry.
But, back to the more practical.
Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1815: "After I had finished making butter this
morning, I went to spinning. Mrs. Brinley sent for some of us to go to
Miss Farquharson. I declined going and none went but Betsy. In the
afternoon, Mama and the girls went to pick berries and I was left alone,
except little Joanna who was asleep. -- Last night the frost was so
great as to kill all the cucumber, and it has been very cold all day.
Sunday, Dec. 31, 1815:
"This is a very unpleasant day. Uncle Brown
came up to dinner with us. In the afternoon, we had lots of young beaus
to see us. Allens, Stayners and Colemans came to inquire after the
ladies’ health. Sally came over for all of us to go over there. Betsy
and Charlotte went but I declined going. Mr. Allen came over to tea with
us. The girls had not been able to git home tonight - it is so bad a
storm. Uncle has not been able to get home."
What Louisa referred to simply as "writing" is published under the
title The 1815 Diary of a Nova Scotia Farm Girl. But it so much more
than a mere reprint of Louisa’s words or a chronicle of the life of a
young farm girl, her seven sisters, her parents, their neighbours and
their relatives. Edited and extensively annotated by Dale McClare, this
charming book is jam-packed with fascinating substantiating details and
is almost impossible to put down.
More next time on journals and diaries.
Footnote:
Bill Norin, who has published the quarterly MacDonald Family
newsletter for 11 years shares this story after reading the column about
Maritimers going to the Boston States.
"My favourite story (all we genealogists go on for hours with our
family tales) was about J.J. Mac Donald who married a Protestant girl on
Prince Edward Island. Her father disowned her and so they moved to
Boston. Caught up in the fervour of a group of Irish Patriots who wanted
to fight the Rebs, J.J. enlisted in the Massachusetts Volunteers. He
wrote home and to the newspapers about his valiant fellow Yankees.
Unfortunately, as an unarmed colour guard he was slain in his first
battle.His widow and two small daughters returned to P.E.I. J.J's
letters which I still have were very moving."
Visit Bill’s webpages for an eyeful of MacDonald stuff:
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