Diaries
The Diaries collection provides access to more than thirty fully transcribed and searchable diaries from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century. The collection includes diaries documenting student life at UVM in different eras, the 1918-1919 flu epidemic, the civil war, life in Italy in the early 1860’s, courtship and marriage, social life, religious life, employment opportunities for women, travel, life at a summer cottage, and more.
Showing 1 - 2 of 2 Records
Roswell Farnham Diary, 1848-1849
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- Creator: Farnham, Roswell, 1827-1903.
- Date Created: 1848-1849
- Description: Roswell Farnham was born in Boston, Massachusetts on July 23, 1827, the son of Roswell and Nancy Bixby Farnham. Farnham's family moved to Bradford, Vermont in 1840, and he received his education at Bradford Academy and the University of Vermont, from which he graduated in 1849. Married to Mary Elizabeth Johnson on December 25, 1849, Farnham taught school before gaining admittance to the Orange County bar in 1857. When the Civil War broke out, he entered the First Vermont Regiment with the Bradford Guards militia as a Second Lieutenant. Farnham served with distinction in both the First Vermont and the Twelfth Vermont, and left the Army in July of 1863 as a Lieutenant Colonel. Following the war, Farnham became general counsel for the Vermont Copper Company and continued to work as both lawyer and administrator of the VCC for the rest of his life. In addition, he held a number of local and state political offices culminating in his defeat of Democrat Edward J. Phelps for the governorship of Vermont in 1880. After completing a single popular term as governor, Farnham returned to his law practice. In 1889 he also became president of the newly-formed New England Company, a group of Northern investors interested in developing the coal and iron deposits of northwestern Georgia. The New England Company was never a success, and Farnham spent much of the last decade of the nineteenth century trying to save it and the VCC from bankruptcy. Badly injured in a fall in November 1898, Farnham recovered sufficiently to resume some of his work but never regained full health. Roswell Farnham died at his home in Bradford on January 5, 1903, at the age of seventy-five. Three of Farnham’s four children lived to adulthood: Charles Cyrus Farnham (1864–1937), Florence Mary Osgood (1866–1958), and William M. Farnham (1869–1927). His first child, Roswell Phelps Farnham Jr., died in infancy in 1861. Farnham was predeceased by a half-brother, Cyrus C. Farnham, in 1863. 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.
- Parent Collections: Diaries
Henry Osman Fisher Diary, 1894-1895
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- Creator: Fisher, Henry Osman, 1872-1954.
- Date Created: 1894-1895
- Description: Henry Osman Fisher was born on October 23, 1872 in Addison, Vt. to Osman and Emma (Smith) Fisher. 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 and Sprague landed in Cape Town and sold the sheep in Bloemfontein, before returning to the U.S. in April 1895. 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. Eventually, Fisher left the sheep exporting business and returned to Vermont to run a farm in Panton, where he married Jessie May Field (1879-1967) on August 3, 1906. The couple had two children, Osman Field Fisher (1910-1993) and Ellen Bigelow (1907-1987). Fisher was a Freemason (Union Lodge No. 2, Middlebury) and was a charter member of Otter Creek Chapter No. 74 of the Order of the Eastern Star in Vergennes. 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.
- Parent Collections: Diaries