By Susan Martin, Collection Services

The MHS has just acquired a manuscript copy of the fascinating 18th-century diary of a young woman named Ann Powell. In it, Ann describes a trip down the Saint Lawrence River, 11 May-June 1789, with her brother William Dummer Powell and his family. The Powells were United Empire Loyalists who had emigrated to Canada ten years earlier. Now William, newly appointed first judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the Hesse District, Province of Quebec, was relocating his entire household from Montreal to Detroit, Michigan.

Along the way, the party had the good fortune to witness a council of the Six Nations at which about 200 chiefs were assembled. Ann was impressed:

I was very much struck with the figures of these Indians as they approached us. They are remarkably tall and finely made and walk with a grace and dignity you can have no idea of. I declare our beaux looked quite insignificant by them – one man called to my mind some of Homer’s finest heroes.

She documented, in great detail, the dress and manners of the tribal people. She heaped praises on Mohawk Chief David Hill (Karonghyontye), and Seneca Chief Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha) amused her, but she was “by no means pleased” with Mohawk Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea). Another interesting passage relates to the social position of elderly Indian women in the Great Lakes region:

 In England, when a man grows infirm and his talents are obscured by age, the wits decide upon his character by calling him an old woman. On the banks of Lake Erie, a woman becomes respectable as she grows old, and I suppose the greatest compliment you can pay a young hero, is that he is as wise as an old woman, a good trait of savage understanding. These ladies preserve a modest silence in the debates (I fear they are not like women of other countries) but nothing is determined without their advice and approbation.

The diary is a 19th-century copy, written mostly in an unknown hand, but it was compiled and annotated between 1863 and 1870 by Boston’s own Eliza Susan Quincy. Eliza, a historian and writer in her own right, took an interest in the manuscript and the Powell family, to which she was distantly related through her grandmother Abigail Phillips Quincy. She researched Ann’s story and added footnotes to the manuscript, presumably in preparation for its publication.

As far as I can tell, the diary has been published just twice in the 224 years since it was written, but never in its complete form. The first printed version—Eliza’s—appeared in the July 1880 issue of The Magazine of American History, pp. 37-47. Not only were whole paragraphs and the names of some individuals redacted, but most of Eliza’s notes didn’t make the cut.

 This juicy story was among those excluded, probably for obvious reasons:

We spent one night at the house of a Captain Duncan, whose wife I had heard often mentioned by my sisters….She is now only nineteen, and has been five years married to a man who is old, disagreeable and vicious. But he was supposed to be rich and her friends absolutely forced her to marry him….I never heard of such a series of cruelties being practised on any poor creature in my life….I felt very much interested by this sweet young woman, and should feel great pleasure in hearing her tyrant was dead; the only means by which she can be released.

Forty years later, Ann’s diary was published again in William Renwick Riddell’s Old Province Tales: Upper Canada, pp. 64-95. Riddell’s version includes some of the previously redacted passages, but is still incomplete, and differs from the MHS copy in many ways.

Although Eliza Susan Quincy’s copy of the diary is only one of many, it does include a substantial section (about half of the volume) entitled “Letters and incidents relative to an accidental acquaintance with the family of Miss Powell. 1833, to 1844.” This section consists of transcripts of Eliza’s correspondence with descendants of Ann Powell. The letters were not printed in 1880 or 1920 and contain a good deal of contextual information about the diary and the Powell family.

Ann Powell married merchant and fellow Loyalist Isaac Winslow Clarke and died in 1792. Her original diary is probably still in private hands.

For more information on Eliza Susan Quincy, search at our website or in our online catalog ABIGAIL.

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

We could all learn a thing or two from 19^th-century reformer and essayist Caroline Dall. An abolitionist and advocate for women’s suffrage, Dall worked for societal change throughout her life. We have her papers in our collections and published the Selected Journals of Caroline Healey Dall, Volume I (1838-1855), edited by Helen R. Deese, in 2006. The second volume (1855-1866) is in production for this year.

Despite Dall’s renown as a literary and reform figure, she had trouble in her personal life just like the rest of us. She fought tirelessly to end slavery and earn the vote for women, and she was even a founder of the American Social Science Association, but relationships comprised the messiest part of her life. Dall’s marriage was a failure. Her husband, Charles, a minister, took a missionary post in India in 1855 and left her to raise their two children alone in the United States.

Dall also struggled in her friendships and often managed to alienate others without understanding why. Although she had encouraged and fostered Louisa May Alcott’s literary talent, she insulted the Alcott family when she authored a critical review of Louisa’s first book, Moods. On August 1, 1865, Dall wrote in her journals, “Well—I was to blame somewhere—perhaps in time, God will show me where.” Earlier that year, Dall similarly turned off another group. Some members of the congregation where she was Sunday School superintendent disliked her and made the fact known. Dall subsequently lost the position. On May 14, 1865, her last day in the post, she wrote that one member of the congregation “turned her back & drew her veil down” when she approached and another “merely lowered her eye-lids.”

Acknowledging her struggles in life, however, Dall chose to maintain a positive outlook. “[All] my trouble was well,” she wrote in her journal on March 27, 1865. Even snubs from the Boston literati couldn’t keep her down. On February 18, 1865, she wrote: 

I often wonder what my lot would been like, if I had been beautiful, and as attractive to men as I am to the young women of my reading class. Then, I suppose I should have belonged to the Atlantic Club, and have been able to get an article into the N. American without maneuvering or waiting.

Dall’s only interest in being beautiful or more successful socially was in how it could benefit her work. But even that would not have been worth it, as she later concluded. She wrote in her journal the next day, “But God cannot carry great reforms, by wrapping them in jelly. They get no hold on men, till they are swallowed like genuine medicine, with full knowledge of their quality & full faith in their power.”

Dall’s desire for an easier life was motivated only by the possibility of benefit to her work, and her trials she met as necessary to her effectiveness at advocating for her causes. In facing life’s personal obstacles, we could all take a little inspiration from her writings.

To read more about Caroline Dall see these earlier posts by Jim Connolly: “Bostonians Respond to Union Loss at 2nd Bull Run” and “Caroline Dall Gears Up for Summer in 1862.”