Beautiful Diaries

I'm excited to say that I just inherited a ton of family diaries!! I am on cloud 9!! My mother's first cousin Colleen in Colorado sent them to me. She has children and grandchildren of her own but she knows I'm the family historian and would take good care of them. I was given copies to a few of them a number of years ago, from my mother's other first cousin Pat in Vermont, but to have the whole collection of actual diaries is just completely awesome, I can't even describe it!!

One of the diaries is from my great great great grandmother Damaris (Robbins) West, it is from 1879-1883. She passed away in 1885 at the age of 77! The diary is 133 years old, unbelievable. The others are a total of 9 diaries from my great grandmother Catharine (Piquet) Clarke. She passed away in 1972 at the age of 92, just 11 months before I was born. Her diaries are 1914-1918, 1920-1925, and 1961-1966. It makes me wonder what happened to the 35 year span of diaries that are lost. =(

I plan to annotate the diary from my grt grt grt grandmother Damaris first, since it is smaller. I want future generations to be able to read them and have an understanding of who these people were, even 130 years from now!

I will probably scan every page into my computer and add the annotations there so as not to ruin the original. I will need to research US and NYS Census records, old newspaper articles and cemetery records to be able to add correct information to the diary of "who, what, where and when". At some point I will tackle my great grandmother Catharine's collection, but that will be a major undertaking, as some of them are very fragile.

(Click on picture to make it larger)

Damaris Robbins West 1879

Catharine Piquet Clarke's Diaries

My great grandmother Catharine had such beautiful handwriting

I can't wait to get started! Dang pesky job and chores will get in the way I'm sure. grumble grumble. Do you have any family treasure's to pass down to future generations??