[Rarebooks] FS: Long run of Handwritten Diaries from Maine

[Bob Petrilla]

Sampson, George G.  ARCHIVE OF THIS MAINE MAN'S 26 HANDWRITTEN DIARIES,
1886-1912: lacking only the 1906 volume. Original manuscripts. Twenty-six
(26) volumes, ranging in size from about 4” x 2 ½” to 6” x 2 ¾”. Some
volumes written in pencil, later ones mostly in ink, in a legible hand.
Virtually all are bound in leather or leatherette, a few with the lower
third of the rear covers removed neatly. All include some 20 pages of
printed front material (calendars, postal rates, almanac facts, etc.). The
back pages in each diary usually contain entries for George’s financial
accounts, names and addresses of friends, and other matter. The diaries
are, because of their small size, necessarily terse, but in most, the daily
entry spaces are filled (only the final few diaries have significant unused
areas). Very Good.

George Sampson's diaries illustrate the sweeping changes across 26 years in
all facets of this young man’s life in New England. As his diaries begin in
1886, George is a rural schoolboy working on the family farm in Franklin
County, Maine. By the final diary in 1912, he has graduated from Bates
College and is an accomplished secondary-school physics teacher in
Worcester, MA, with a Master’s degree from Clark University, and he is
taking additional, presumably doctoral, courses at Columbia University
during a teaching sabbatical.  ~~~

Following is the first page of our five-page description which accompanies
the diaries~~~

George’s roots on the family farm are firmly in evidence starting with the
first volume. Each entry in virtually all the volumes, even his “urban”
ones, begins with the weather. In the early diaries, his laconic reports on
his activities, and his family’s, document the rhythms of farm life in
Maine. The Sampsons, including Mama (later “Mother”), “Papa” (later
“Father” aka R.S. Sampson, RFD #3, Farmington, Maine, d. 1907), older
brother Arthur, and older sister Alzie, all live near Farmington and
Temple, Maine, as the diaries open. Most of their relatives live fairly
close by, including: Grandpa (d. 1888), Uncles Gus, Horace, John, Henry,
Orville, Fred (d. 1887), Crocker (d. 1901) and Daniel; and Aunts Ada,
Jennie, Etta, “Pheoby” and Abby; and various cousins. In addition to
farming the land attached to their house, the Sampsons go frequently to
“the Farm” nearby, a site where the larger animals are kept and more acres
of crops are grown, and where they sometimes stay overnight to work. The
winter season sees George’s father and brother Arthur (and, increasingly,
George, as the diaries progress), cutting wood almost daily, hauling loads
of hay and wood and “breaking roads” through the ice, filling sap buckets,
then boiling the sap, etc. Then come the spring chores: setting out trees,
grafting, planting, plowing, hauling “dressing”, etc., followed by a season
of mowing, haying, picking sweet corn and “corn fodder”, planting fall
crops, “thrashing” (oats, wheat, barley). As fall arrives, the Sampsons are
occupied with pulling potatoes and carrots, picking and selling apples,
moving the livestock back from “the Farm” to the barn, killing hogs,
chickens and ducks, “banking” the house for winter, etc. In addition to his
agricultural work, Papa breaks colts--his own and the neighbors’--and
raises and sells (and occasionally even “swaps”) horses and sheep and
cattle. He and Arthur often work for neighbors (haying, mowing, etc.), and
in summer, hired men/neighbors come and help them with their own crops.
Modern improvements slowly creep in: they “mow with a machine” in July,
1894; and 1896, go to Lewiston Fair “on the electric cars” (1896). The
Sampsons buy their own mowing machine in 1900.  [By 1905, George and his
college roommate will install electric lights in their room. By 1911,
George evidences a telephone by writing the number at the front of his
diary.] Description continues....   $850.00

Postpaid in US.  Usual trade terms.



    *  R & A  Petrilla*



*          Antiquarian Booksellers                     PO Box 306
   Roosevelt, NJ 08555*


*           bob at petrillabooks.com <%28609%29%20426-4999>**        Member:
 ABAA, ILAB, IOBA*


*​ *