Historical Diaries Panel at Plymouth, 13 May

On Tuesday, 13 May, I’ll be at the Plymouth Public Library as part of a panel discussion on using diaries in historical research. This event will run from 7:00 to 8:30 P.M. in the Otto Fehlow Meeting Room, and is free and open to the public.

The other panelists will be Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, author of One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit, and Ondine Le Blanc, Director of Publications at the Massachusetts Historical Society and thus one of the people behind the publication of Ellen Coolidge’s travel diary.

I’ll describe my work on boys’ diaries in the Revolutionary period, including those of John Quincy Adams, Peter Thacher, and Quincy Thaxter. I also plan to share secrets from the diary of John Rowe.

Donna Curtin, Executive Director of the Plymouth Antiquarian Society, will moderate the discussion and question session to follow.

As long as I’m talking a bit about me, here are links to a couple of articles that appeared on the web last week:

• I’m continuing to review episodes of the Turn television series for Den of Geek, and also wrote a profile of John Graves Simcoe, the real British officer behind [far behind—almost invisible in the distance behind] one of that show’s main villains. For more on Simcoe, check out Todd Braisted’s terrific article on Rachel Smith’s excellent new blog, Turn to a Historian.
• At the Journal of the American Revolution, Ray Raphael and I teamed up to write a pair of articles about the figure of a musket-toting woman shown above. Can A.P. U.S. History test-takers fairly deduce anything about that image without context? And where did it originate?

Through Colonial Women’s Eyes at Historic Deerfield

Historic Deerfield’s Summer Lecture Series for this year is titled “Through Her Eyes, In Her Words: The Lives and Writings of Three Colonial Women.” It will feature three authors describing the surviving writing of women from colonial New England, one lecture on each of the remaining Thursdays in this month.

11 July: “One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit,” presented by Michelle Marchetti Coughlin. I heard Coughlin speak at the New England Historical Genealogical Society in February. Her book One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit explores what seems to be Coit’s commonplace book, along with other documents. Coit was born in Roxbury in 1673 and moved to Connecticut, where she died in 1758.

18 July: “Writing Her Way to Salvation: the Role of the Pen in the Life of Elizabeth Porter Phelps,” presented by Elizabeth Pendergast Carlisle. Phelps kept a diary and letters over many years in Hadley, providing Carlisle with the material for her 2007 book, Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter Phelps and Life at Forty Acres (1747-1817).

25 July: “Re-introducing Phillis Wheatley: A Genius in Bondage,” presented by Vincent Carretta. His recent biography of Wheatley is a fine feat of reconstructing a life both celebrated and shadowed.

Exploring Mehetabel Coit’s Diary, 6 Feb.

If it’s sounding like there are lots of historical events in greater Boston at the beginning of February, that’s because there are. I guess we like to take advantage of the good weather. Here’s another.

On Wednesday, 6 February, at 6:00 P.M., the New England Historic Genealogical Society will host a talk by Michelle Marchetti Coughlin on her new book, One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit, published by the University of Massachusetts Press:

Mehetabel Coit (1673-1758) is the author of what may be the earliest surviving diary by an American woman. A native of Roxbury, Massachusetts, who later moved to Connecticut, Mehetabel began her diary at the age of fifteen and kept it intermittently until she was well into her seventies.

A previously overlooked resource, the diary contains entries on a broad range of topics as well as poems, recipes, folk and herbal medical remedies, religious meditations, and financial accounts. An extensive collection of letters by Mehetabel and her female relatives has also survived, shedding further light on her experiences. Mehetabel’s long life covered an eventful period in American history, and this book explores the numerous—and sometimes surprising—ways in which her personal history was linked to broader social and political developments.

The lecture will be followed by a book signing for a total of about ninety minutes. This event is free and open to the public. The N.E.H.G.S. is at 99-101 Newbury Street in Boston.

The website for Coughlin’s book lists a number of other venues where she’s speaking in the upcoming weeks and months.

For people especially interested in women’s experiences and how they related them, I’ll add a pointer to In the Words of Women, a blog based on a recent book of the same name by Louise V. North, Janet M. Wedge, and Landa M. Freeman. Every entry is about a diary, letter, or other writing by a woman during America’s Revolutionary era.