Cephas Kent (1754-1813), late 18th century diary. The first part of Kent’s diary details his religious experiences between the ages of 12 and 21, while the remainder describes his participation in the Continental Army’s campaign into Canada in 1775, especially the Siege of Fort St. Jean (“St. Johns”).

Erastus Root (1789-1829), medical student diary covering 1815-1818. Topics in Root’s diary include UVM’s medical program, John Pomeroy, medical practices, teaching, and modes of travel in the early nineteenth century.

Chester Way (1897-1973), two student diaries from 1918 and 1919. Topics in Way’s diaries include the 1918 influenza pandemic, fraternities at the University of Vermont, Kake Walk, World War One and UVM’s SATC program, Vermont farm life in 1918, and male friendships and relationships in the early twentieth century.

Roswell Farnham (1827-1903), UVM student diary covering 1848-1849. Topics in this diary include the curriculum, faculty, and student experience at UVM in the late 1840s; Burlington and neighboring towns in the late 1840s, UVM’s Lambda Iota fraternity, Zachary Taylor and the Whig Party, and teaching in Vermont and Canada in the mid-nineteenth century. Near the end of the diary are several essays written by Farnham during his senior year at UVM. Topics in these essays include religion, natural history, and King Lear.

Mandana White Goodenough (1826-1924), diary covering 1844-1845 and part of 1861. Topics in this diary include employment opportunities for women in the 1840s, courtship and marriage, illness and death, and the beliefs and practices of Christians in mid-nineteenth-century Vermont.

Mary S. Davis Kelley (1866-1917), diary covering 1883-1893. Topics in this diary include women’s health and other subjects relating to health and medicine; the experiences of working women circa 1890, turn-of-the-century courtship and marriages, and the local social and cultural history of Fairlee, Vt.

Genieve Lamson (1887-1966), three diaries covering 1908-1912. Topics in Lamson’s diaries include teaching (as well as the process for becoming a certified teacher in Vermont circa 1910), major cities of the West Coast, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle; turn-of-the-century fashion and home clothes-making, the sinking of the Titanic, turn-of-the-century slang, and the local history of Randolph, Vt.

Charles Blinn (1843-1926), two civil war diaries covering 1861-1864. Topics in Blinn’s diaries include the experiences of Union soldiers in camp, on the battlefield, and as prisoners of war in Confederate prisons; the experiences of Southerners in Union-occupied towns, illness and medical practices in the military, and the Battle of Gettysburg.

Mary Farnham (1828-1913), civil war diary covering 1862-1863. Topics in Farnham’s diary include living conditions in Union camps and towns near the front lines, the roles and expectations of women during the American Civil War, Washington D.C. in the 1860s, mid-century modes of travel, and health and medicine during the Civil War.

H.O. Fisher (1872-1954), diary covering 1894-1897. In 1894, Fisher was hired to sell Merino sheep and left Vermont for New York City. In November of that year, he and his brother-in-law, Carlton Watson Sprague, sailed to South Africa with 35 sheep. Fisher returned to South Africa the following year, selling sheep in Port Elizabeth and Molteno on behalf of C.W. Mason. Fisher made a third trip overseas in 1897, this time selling sheep in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Topics in this diary include the international Merino sheep trade, selling livestock in Africa and South America, the perils of turn-of-the-century sea travel, and meteorological phenomena on the Atlantic Ocean.

Long Pond, Westmore, diary of a summer camp covering 1889-1903. The Long Pond Westmore diary, which spans the years 1889 to 1903, contains a partial history of a summer camp on Long Pond in Westmore, Vt., as well as inventories of the camp’s supplies and accounts of property maintenance and recreational activities undertaken by its caretakers. Topics in this diary include local flora and fauna and outdoor recreational activities, such as hiking and fishing.

Caroline Crane Marsh (1816-1901), seventeen diaries covering 1861-1865. Caroline Crane Marsh’s diaries (1861-1865) document the Marshes’ day-to-day lives during their time in Italy, particularly during their stay in Turin, when Caroline’s husband, George Perkins Marsh, began his long tenure (1861-1882) as U.S. Minister to the Kingdom of Italy. Topics in the Italian diaries include the American Civil War, race and slavery, Catholicism, European political and social relations, British-American political relations, Napoleon III and Second French Empire, King Victor Emmanuel II and Italian politics, Giuseppe Garibaldi and Italian nationalism, religious and funerary practices in Italy, the status and treatment of women in Italy and elsewhere, problems within and interactions between the Italian social classes, the experiences of Protestants, Jews, and rural peasants in Italy; health and medicine in Italy, Italian industries and agricultural practices, the Italian education system, the Italian language, crime and punishment in Italy, Italian fashion and etiquette, tourism and hospitality in Italy and the Alps, popular books and reading habits during the 1860s, George Perkins Marsh’s diplomatic and scholarly activities in Italy, and the everyday experiences of upper and lower-class Italians.

The diaries in this collection were largely transcribed during the work-from-home portion of the Covid-19 pandemic by Special Collections staff (Ingrid Bower, Erin Doyle, Hannah Johnson, Sharon Thayer) and students (Ella Breed, Dorothy Dye, Ibrahim Genzhiyev, Tabitha Ireifej, Mike Maloney). Transcription work on the Caroline Crane Marsh diaries was greatly aided by previous work conducted by Mary Alice Lowenthal.