Description
The diary is written on interleaved blank pages in a 1759 almanac. The regular, brief diary entries are attributed to Margaret Appleton Holyoke Mascarene. Some entries, beginning in April, appear to be written in a different hand. The second author may have been Mascarene's sister Priscilla Holyoke (1739-1782) given that the entries mention visits by "Pater Mater Epes" and "Bets & Nancy." Priscilla, Margaret, Elizabeth ("Betsy"), and Anna ("Nancy) were the four daughters of Edward and Margaret Holyoke. After Margaret Holyoke's death in 1740, Edward Holyoke married Mary Whipple Epes, the widow of Symond Epes. Entries are typically only a few words and record domestic activities including childrearing, travel, house guests, family illness, and deaths in the community. Mascarene references British victories in the French and Indian War and the measles outbreak of 1759, including the illness of Faro, who may have been Mascarene's slave. Notably, the diary includes entries chronicling the care of Mascarene's newborn son by a nurse. Three interleaved pages at the end of the diary contain a list of expenses and payments and a list of clothing sent to the wet nurse Mrs. Cherry.Title supplied by cataloger.The diary was purchased by the Harvard University Archives in 2010.The diary does not have any ownership signatures. The author is attributed based on family information published in The Holyoke Diaries, 1709-1856 (Essex Institute, 1911).The upper half of the first leaf is torn away.Margaret Appleton Holyoke Mascarene (1726-1792), the eldest child of Harvard's ninth president, Edward Holyoke, and his second...
Text
Diaries.Almanacs 18th Century.
Held in the collections of Harvard University.
