This collection contains three diaries that span the period November 17, 1828 to January 1850. The first diary starts in 1828 when Ames was eighteen years old, and ends thirteen years later. The years 1830-1833 have few entries, and the diary resumes semi-regular entries in 1834. She frequently summarizes religious sermons, lectures and lessons attended, what was said at prayer meetings, and speculates on religion. Brief accounts of when she leaves Newburyport for visits to local places such as Lowell and Andover, Mass., Mt. Auburn, Charlestown, and Cambridge are also included. A longer trip to a camp meeting on Cape Cod and a trip to Maine to see members of the Tyler and Ames family are also mentioned. She notes visiting with and getting letters from her future husband James Tyler Ames, whom she variously refers to as T.J.A. or A.J.T. or just J.T. in her writings. There is a ten month gap in Ellen's entries from the fall of 1837 through the spring of 1838. The diaries resume on her wedding night in Boston, and she writes from then on about moving to a new home in a new town, starting a household, a trip with her husband to New York City, upstate New York and Niagara Falls, the birth and death of her first child, William Tyler Ames, and the death of her mother. Entries of interest include her note about hearing "Dr. Beecher" speak at Mt. Auburn shortly after her wedding, and a note on April 6, 1841 about the gloom over Newburyport at the news that President William Henry Harrison died after one month in office. The last page of her diary also includes a list of fifteen books she read. The second diary is a short thirteen page document made of folded sheets of paper that describes the events of Ames' life in 1846. This booklet mainly contains an account of a tour through New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C., presumably with her husband. She describes seeing several rooms at the White House and the John Trumbull paintings in the Capitol Rotunda. At the end of November Ames resumes the diary, and mentions a trip to Boston for items for their new home, and her family's first night in their new home. An entry dated November 28, 1846 mentions the wreck of the steamer "Atlantic" near Norwich, Conn., and the tragedy of fifty lives lost. The third diary for 1849, kept in Felts' Pocket Diary, 1849, also contains some notes for 1850. The entries are infrequent, and written in pencil. Ames records the weather, visits from friends and family, her husband's business trips, and her own travel; which was mainly home to Newburyport. This diary served primarily as an account book. Bills she paid to various people are noted, as well as the prices of fabric, thread, pre-made clothing items, food supplies and other household goods Ames purchased for her family.
