This is the edited transcription of a diary written by Caroline Healy Dall in the 1800’s. The editor has also added introductions to each chapter, which each cover a year or two in the life of Caroline Dall. Deese has also added footnotes that identify most of the people Dall mentions in her diary. And she mentions a lot of people. There are a few that are relatively well-known, but most are just the people, family, friends, and neighbors, that she happened to know. Since Dall was active in the Transcendentalist, abolitionist, and women’s rights movements, there are a lot of people.
Dall was from the upper-middle class, was well educated, and was raised to be self-confident. This all helped her when she needed to earn money to support herself and her children. Her husband, Minister Charles Dall, decided to become a missionary in India, and basically left Caroline to her own devices. She survived by writing articles for various publications, and by becoming a speaker, mostly on women’s rights. Most of the diary entries are made, as the title suggests, when she is living in her native Boston, but she also lived briefly near Washington, D.C., and in Canada when her husband was working as a minister there.
Dall describes some of her daily life, but as a more upper-class woman, she had a servant for much of her life. So there is little mention of the drudgery that most women dealt with just to run their households. Much of what she relates is her relationships with the people in her life. Some of these relationships seem to stand the test of time, but others seem more problematic for her. One interesting thing is that, even while she was writing it, she knew she wanted her diary to be preserved, and perhaps someday published.
If this was your family, how would you research them? I have not yet used someone’s diary to research my ancestors, or the era they lived in. Although Caroline Dall mentions quite a few people, the main reason to read diaries from different eras is to learn about the era itself. Deese did an excellent job of determining who Dall was referring to, using the census on Ancestry in many cases. The best places to find diaries would be local historical societies in the areas where your ancestors lived or traveled through.