Jan and John Maggs Antiques

Jennie Williams - A second diary

Last year we published a transcription of the 1873 diary of Jennie Williams, a young Franklin County woman who faithfully recorded the important events in her life during the year in which she was married. Last week we received this e-mail.

Dear Jan & John,

I discovered your website after searching for additional information on Jennie Williams, and a happy discovery it was! Now I'll have to come visit your showrooms in person.

I was recently sent, from Gill, a transcribed copy of Jennie Williams diary of 1876, with a cover viz "The Diary of Mary Jane Elnora (Williams) Bardwell 1876 A Girl from Gill." I assumed that I was sent it because I would appreciate it, and/or because I might make something of it. Both of which I did.

While I am a longtime amateur local historian and genealogist of Northfield, I guess Gill is close enough for me to have immersed myself in it. Consequently, I have compiled a draft genealogy of all the interrelated families, principally of Gill. I have also drafted an annotation of the diary, mostly in the way of further identifying the people and named places mentioned. (I happened to be googling Orpha Tilson when I came upon your web site).

I was not told whether the original has been deposited in Deerfield, or where it is housed, or whether "Gill" was aware of the 1873 diary, although now I have alerted them. Or whether you were aware of the 1876 diary. Many of the same people and places are mentioned in the 1876 as are in the 1873. I am writing you to see if what I have compiled in this regard is of interest to you. I am not especially proprietary about it. I imagine it all deposited somewhere that someone may find it useful some day for a social history or some such as the recent "The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century," by Martha Hodes, which is about a Northfield native.

In any event, I am happy for the serendipity and will try to get up to Conway sometime to say hello.

All best,
 

Our readers who took an interest in Jenny - and we know of several - will no doubt be as excited as we are about the discovery of this later diary. We've had preliminary conversations with the author of this note and others interested in local history, and we feel confident that additional material on our young bride will become available. Watch this Newsletter for updates.

The complete transcription of Jennie's 1873 diary is now online in one place. Click here.

Click the image to return to this month's newsletter.