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Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries from the
American Antiquarian Society, 1750-1950
PREPUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT
I think we ought to understand each other’s love for each other, and we
can do it no other way than by writing.
—Harriet Chamberlain to William H. Mason, November 2, 1866
Alexander Street’s Manuscript Women’s Letters and Diaries from the
American Antiquarian Society will bring together 100,000 pages of the
personal writings of women of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth
centuries, displayed as high-quality images of the original manuscripts,
extensively indexed and online for the first time. The letters and diaries
reveal, in each woman’s own hand, the details of the authors’ daily lives,
their activities and concerns, and their attitudes towards the people and
world around them. The collection is drawn entirely from the extensive
holdings of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.
CONTENT
Spanning
1750 to 1950, the database is particularly strong in nineteenth-century
material. Highlights include:
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The
letters of Annie Sullivan detailing her teaching of Helen Keller,
written to Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institution and
Massachusetts School of the Blind;
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One
hundred letters written by Ellen Tucker Emerson, eldest daughter of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, describing life in Concord during the Civil War;
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The
papers of Abby Kelley Foster, noted women’s rights advocate and
abolitionist, depicting the activities of the antislavery movement in
New England, New York, and Ohio.
Thousands of letters and diary entries from less well known women vividly
document even the smallest details of their lives and shed light on the
roles women played within their families, their communities, and the social
and political movements of their times. In many cases, we also include the
replies, from both men and women, placing the letters in their full context.
Detailed biographical notes illuminate the lives of the authors, including
multigenerational details, as exemplified in the letters and diaries of
three generations of women within the same family.
The writings in Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries are by women
from New England families, but this is by no means a “New England
collection.” The women wrote from the many places throughout the U.S. in
which they lived, traveled, worked, studied, and observed the lives and
historical events around them—including John Brown’s raid, the activities of
the Ku Klux Klan, numerous wars, and:
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Experiences in a Colorado mining camp, through Nancy Colburn Hartford’s
log of her time there;
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Frontier conditions in Florida in 1830, as lived and described by Julia
Ann Draper Lazelle;
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World War I Army training camps and the American Expeditionary Forces in
France, through Lizzie Bliss Dewey’s correspondence with friends in
service;
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Charitable work in the South, documented by the Chase sisters’ writings
of their experiences.
Other
topics include female education and intellectual development, medical
conditions, religious life, and domestic work, including Anna Quincy Thaxter
Cushing’s thirty-six-year diary documenting her literary interests, the
education of her daughters, and her minutely detailed descriptions of
housework; Catharine Flint’s 1860-1867 “household notebook,” in which she
kept careful track of the tasks performed by her domestic servants; and
Lizzie Wilson Goodenough’s documentation of the life of a servant in
Brattleboro, Vermont. (Mine is a hard & lonely life day after day comes
and brings its work. It seems my life is made up of nothing but long days
for nothing but work…for others.)
SEMANTIC INDEXING
FOR SEARCHING IN NEW WAYS
Each letter and diary entry will be indexed using Alexander Street’s
Semantic Indexing™, allowing researchers to identify and locate content
in ways never before possible, with pinpoint searching possible to the level
of the individual letter and passage. Search by the type of document, date
and place written, where sent; the writer’s age, occupation, date and place
of birth, date and place of death, marital status, maternal status,
religion; and other search entry points, such as historical event. The
letters and diaries will be displayed as images of the manuscripts, giving
users access not only to the women’s words, but also to details revealed by
the physical documents themselves. A selected twenty-five percent of the
collection is also rekeyed, allowing for full-text searching.
PUBLICATION DETAILS
Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries will be available on the Web
through annual subscription or a one-time purchase of perpetual rights in
2009. For more information please contact
sales@alexanderstreet.com or
your sales representative.
You expect a frank letter. I trust you shall have it. I must forbear
writing, or write my whole heart.
—Ann Brewer to Leander Gage, August 24, 1819
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