[Rarebooks] FS: Two handwritten diaries from Chester County, PA, 1883

[Bob Petrilla]

Ash, Emma E. and Joseph Webb Ash. HANDWRITTEN DIARIES KEPT BY THE SPINSTER
SCHOOLTEACHER AND BY HER COUSIN, A FARMER, BOTH RESIDING IN CHESTER COUNTY,
PENNSYLVANIA: The two wallet-style, pocket diaries are for the year 1883. .
Original manuscripts. Both bound in black leather, lightly worn, measuring
4" x 2.5".  Good . Full Leather.
(1) Diary of Emma E. Ash, spinster daughter, sometime schoolteacher & music
teacher. Contains 14pp of printed matter, followed by Emma's regular
entries throughout 1883, accounts and memoranda at the back. Written in ink
in a clear hand, often cross-written when she ran out of room for that day.
Emma shares household chores with her parents (sweeps, cans fruit, picks
berries, bakes, washes and hangs clothes, gardens, knits, sews, tats, picks
chickens, &c.). In Autumn, they cook for and serve 8 or 9 threshers,
followed by visiting corn huskers. She teaches from three to eight pupils
at school, gives music lessons, and is an avid reader. The diary records a
steady stream of callers named Ash as well as Lewis, Gaus, Jones, &c. Her
social life includes the Hibernia Festival & Firemen's Fair, along with
funerals, evenings of whist and euchre, &c. She travels regularly to
Coatesville and to Avondale, Kennett Square, Marshalltown, "G-ville," and
"the city." In the evenings, she may be squired by one H.W., coaching in
fair weather, sleighing in the snow. In spite of all the activity, Emma
often writes of being lonely and tired. At the back of the diary, years
later in 1916, she writes of "many hours of suffering but many glad hours,"
noting that she is "today with my two girls and Howard, my youngest boy,
gone to college as I dreamed and planned for since he was a baby." ~ (2)
Diary of Joseph Webb Ash, farmer. After 14pp of printed matter at front,
the pages for January 1 to March 17, and May 9 to 19, are torn out. Writing
in pencil, Webb notes that he will turn 35 in December. His entries provide
a detailed picture of the Chester County farmer's life in 1883, including
what he buys for home and farm, and from whom, along with prices paid. His
activities center on dairy farming, trips to the "cremery" to sell milk,
buying and selling livestock, butchering, and selling eggs, as well as
plowing, sowing, threshing, mowing, and harvesting. Crops include clover,
oats, potatoes, straw, and wheat. He also writes of cleaning the well,
picking stone, enlarging the "granry," fixing the school bell, "holling"
cow manure, &c. Frequent trips include Coatesville, Cedar Knoll, and the
Chester County Bank. Also mentioned are other Ash family members, funerals,
elections, etc.          $150.00

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