Reading Only Three Things

I was reading a book about archeological work done in New Netherland and it mentioned a related book.  A young man, Daniel M. Tredwell, who lived in New York, wrote this additional resource. The book, “Personal Reminiscences of Men and Things on Long Island - Part One,” was published in 1912. I planned to quickly read through the book and get to the archeological parts, but once I started reading I could not stop. The perspective and insights about life in the United States during the late 1800s was riveting. Daniel's book was not written to impress anyone; it was simply a journal about what he observed while growing up. He lived at a time before kindling wood, anthracite coal, gas, friction matches, canned fruit, sewing machines, typewriters, telegraphs, mail, railroads, policemen, cigarettes, blotting paper, and steel pans. He said it was a time when “everybody was happy and content.”

One thing that interested me was the value his family placed on education. There were not a lot of literary resources where Daniel lived, and he mentioned only three things he and his family read regularly. First was the newspaper; his family received two different subscriptions each week delivered by a stage driver. One was The Long Island Telegraph and Friend of Education, and the other was The Long Island Farmer, published in Jamaica. Daniel’s family looked forward to this delivery since it was their “weekly supply of literature and information from the outside world.”

A second piece of reading the Tredwell Family enjoyed was the Farmer’s Almanac, which hung prominently in the chimney corner of their living room. They consulted this piece of literature often to: verify times of the rising and setting of the sun and moon, check tides, and predict the seasons for the coming year. The last part of the almanac had a list of chronological historic events beginning with the Garden of Eden and progressing to the current date. Additionally, the almanac included medical advice and recipes. The Tredwell family pursued scientific and historical occupations later in life and I can’t help but think this book was a major influence in those decisions.

The most interesting piece of literature the Tredwell family read was a manuscript they referred to as the “Old Farm Diary” - it came with the house they lived in. Daniel said it “had been about our house from our earliest recollection.” It was made up of approximately sixty pages, with the first and last pages missing. The faded, brown ink filled the pages and many of the corners were worn off but Daniel noted the “penmanship was a masterpiece of excellence.” The "Old Farm Diary" covered a period from 1720 - 1744 and described matters related to the farm the Tredwells lived on. The people that wrote the diary made trips to Sag Harbor and the Hamptons on horseback. About these journeys, Daniel recorded, “The[se] trips constituted a great travel in our mind at the time and we read them over and over with the utmost delight.” The people who had previously lived in the home were the Tredwell's ancestors and this manuscript was a few generations removed from them. Daniel's father recognized the neighbors and slaves mentioned on its’ pages from stories his father shared with him. After reading through this document for years, Daniel went back to look up some facts but it was gone. No one remembered the day it disappeared it was simply not there.

One idea stayed with Daniel and his siblings from reading the “Old Farm Diary.” Daniel claimed the old manuscript “made a lasting impression on our mind and our first unfledged literary efforts were made in imitation of it, and we made a resolution early in life to write a diary of the events of our lives.” Daniel’s attempts to write a journal like the one he grew up reading started out a bit patchy but his published journal ended up being two volumes and recorded his life from 1838 to 1888 - nearly fifty years.

I have thought of so many questions since contemplating Daniel’s small library. First, I am impressed with how what we read is a real influence in our lives. I am also extremely intrigued about the “Old Farm Diary.” How could it just not be there one day? What a treasure to come with a house and was this a common practice? I know people kept records in family bibles but I had never heard of a journal of a house being kept. Reading from Daniel's journal about the way people thought, what the inventions were, and how their views changed are fascinating.

So like Daniel, I hope you would take a minute each day and write about the events and thoughts about your own life. Describe your iPhone, your favorite app, how you get to work, what you think about current events, and what interests you. When someone reads it 70 years from now they will be amazed that you could even do anything with such basic technology and find it unbelievable what you worried about in your daily life. Just as I felt when I read Daniel’s words, your words will also be riveting, as your readers discover what your life was like - they won’t be able to stop reading.

Write it Down

We live at a time when it easy to share every thing that is going on in our lives with anyone we want to share it with. We can text, tweet or Facebook (to name a very few) any information or pictures about what we are doing in our lives. These bits of information usually include brief statements about what we cooked for supper, which movie we watched, how far we ran that day or a quote we thought was inspirational. But with all this sharing, we never really communicate how we feel about the things we are doing. We end up leaving behind a list of facts instead of a complete picture of who we are. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy technology and share a lot of tidbits about my daily life through cyberspace. However, I still think it is important to spend time often with the older technology of pen and paper and record what we think and feel about the things we are tweeting and texting about all day. 

In his book, "The Greater Journey," David McCullough shared an example that illustrates the value of keeping a daily journal. During the 1830s many Americans went to Paris to study art, medicine, and literature because Paris was the hub of knowledge for these livelihoods at this time. Unfortunately in 1870 war broke out in Paris; violence and terror enveloped everyone living there as they survived a yearlong siege on the city. Many of the Americans escaped Paris by train, on foot and even in hot air balloons, to safe locations; only a few remained in the city. One individual that stayed was Elihi B. Washburne. He was the American minister to France so he had some authority to help the people of Paris during this time. Washburne spent every waking hour dealing with stressful situations, trying to protect, feed, and calm the citizens of Paris. Besides this work, he consistently worried about his own family's safety. They fled the city but he did not have any way of communicating with them. Washburne literally worked from the break of day until midnight every single day, with hardly a minute to himself.

Despite this exhausting schedule Washburne managed to write detailed entries in his journal every single day. Interestingly, Washburne was almost the only person in Paris who kept a detailed journal of what was happening during this time. Nearly all of the information we have about Paris during this siege comes from one man’s personal journal.

McCullough declared:

“No one could yet appreciate . . . the immeasurable value of the diary [Washburn] had kept day after day through the entire ordeal . . . writing often at great length late at the end of an exhausting, horrible day. The daily entries might have been abbreviated notes only, telegraphic in style, something to be ‘worked up later’ as a memoir. But Washburne was not so constituted. He wrote with clarity, insight, and such great empathy for the human drama at hand. If [Washburne’s] decision to stay [in Paris] and face whatever was to come had resulted only in the diary, he would have made an enormous, singular contribution” (McCullough, 328).

Journals are primary source documents. For a historian this means that the information found in personal journals is the best it gets. Journals allow us to read firsthand accounts of what happened to people during pivotal moments in history; as well as what their everyday lives were like. Each journal is also valuable because it gives a different perspective to a situation. So when these many perspectives are combined, a more complete picture of the past can be pieced together. Lewis & Clark, Adrian Van der donck and Alexander von Humboldt wrote some of my favorite journals. Their consistent entries record what they experienced and what their thoughts were about the adventures that unfolded before them.

I am also lucky enough to have some journals of my grandparents and others, which I treasure. Sometimes their entries are about doing laundry, being sick, or dealing with finance - seemingly common events. However, since they shared their thoughts about normal occurrences, their lives are not simply narrowed down to a list of what they did each day. Instead, their journals are a window into their lives, how they felt, what they worried about, what they enjoyed, etc. All of these details bring to my mind a broader image of who they really were and I feel like I know them better.

We will all be gone someday and none of us have power over this eventual ending. However, we do have power over what we leave behind. We can leave abbreviated sentences in cyberspace; or we can bestow a vivid, a full, and a living picture of our lives. An image we have carefully written, one that those who come after us can read, can reread, and treasure.

Our Own Histories

When we think of history we often go back centuries to some far off time and place and dig about to find what interests us.  However, if we look at our own lives, many of us have lived through amazing events in history.  Those who were alive during the Challenger Disaster, 9-11 or any number of the natural disasters that occur today have lived through some monumental history and each have thoughts and feelings about those life altering days.  We also have people in our lives and personal events that occur which can quietly slip away and be forgotten rather quickly in the fast paced world we live in.

One event from my own history is the establishment of an event in my community.  Over a decade ago, my good friend Sharen suggested we host a Cook-off in our community-filled with prizes, impartial judges, and award-winning recipes.  Under her impetus, we organized what became an annual event in our town for more than a decade.  A few years back, ideas changed and the Annual Cook-off became a thing of the past until recently I asked some of the young people I work with if they would be interested in having it again. They were excited about it and helped to organize and participant in it. As I walked into the building that evening, I was excited to see the tables all set and decorated with centerpieces that Sharen had made years ago and saved in the community closet for events like these.  But seeing these made me a bit melancholy since Sharen was not there this time . . . she had died quite unexpectedly of leukemia only a year ago. 

I took a deep breath and continued with the events of the evening.  We had added a new item this year to evening – live entertainment.  We had a young lady who composed her own music come and play her guitar and sing her songs for us. As I listened to her lyrics I could tell some of her own history as she sang of love, growing up, her sister and Oregon rain.  As I sat at one of the tables, listening to her songs I found myself staring at the centerpiece on my table.  It was comprised of three simple birds and painted eggs in a small aluminum bucket.  One of the ladies beside me saw me staring at it and mentioned that she had been looking at that all night and thought it was so cute.  She then asked me if I had made it. That question stunned me and I could only mumbled, “No, a good friend of mine did.” She again commented on how cute it was and the conversation ended.  I was just left there with that sentence hanging painfully in my mind.  I could have added so much more to my reply!  I could have added that the creator of the centerpiece was not just a good friend, but the best friend I ever had, I could have told her what an amazing person Sharen was, and how it was her idea to have these Cook-offs, and I could have mentioned that she died just a year ago this very week . . . I could have gone on and on an on but instead I just dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands to keep from crying.

This incident made me realize that all of us know people and participate in events that can be lost to common knowledge even within our lifetimes.  It motivated me to consistently take more time to write down my thoughts, feelings and ideas of what I experience that may seem mundane or that may be my own personal life-altering days. Everything seems so permanent but I have learned that situations can change rather unexpectedly and if memories are recorded in the pages of our own past they will remain, instead of fading quietly into the background noise of life.