Brown Thurston's journal, for the period 1834 to 1893, consists of three sections. The first section, 1834-1838, is an almost daily account of activities during the four-year voyage he made on the Nantucket temperance whaler Statira. Unable to secure permanent employment as a printer in New York City in 1834, he shipped as a crew member on the whaler. He includes in his narrative whale sightings and subsequent chases, desertions, a shipboard smallpox epidemic, eclipses of the sun and other phenomena, weather conditions, political and patriotic remarks (particularly on July 4, 1835), exchanges with other ships, accounts of missionary activities, and Thurston's observations on the industriousness, hospitality, and living conditions of the peoples they encountered. There are several detailed descriptions of local flora and fauna. After his return to Maine in 1838, entries in the second section of his journal, 1838-1850, were made less frequently. Thurston noted, however, visitors to his home, his tours and trips, letters from family and friends, his moves to Bangor, Augusta, and finally to Portland (Nov. 1841), and his attendance at temperance and prayer meetings. The lengthiest entries for this section are Thurston's detailed notes made after he had attended lyceum meetings and lectures. On Sunday mornings he regularly entered the local almshouse to "hold converse with the inmates upon the subject of religion--found some to hear, and some in whom the spirit of opposition was quite strong." He faithfully recorded in considerable detail some of the morning and afternoon sermons he had heard. Entries only occasionally refer to his work at various newspaper presses during this period: in July 1841, he noted that for at least one year he had been printing the Maine Temperance Gazette. The final entries for this segment were made in 1850 after a six-year break. In 1893 Thurston composed the third section of his journal, a lengthy reminiscence about his childhood and youth, with some references to his partnerships. There is also a copy of a poignant letter he addressed to his youngest daughter Jessie and dated May 1858, three months after the death of his first wife. The journal ends with a two-page whaling log. Three loose items consist of an undated alliterative exercise on "Thoughts," an undated (probably c. 1838) essay entitled "Thieves & Robers, alias Nantucket ship owners," and an 1841 account of his religious awakening three years earlier.
