Henry L. Sheldon diaries, 1833-1907.

ArchivalResource

Sheldon, Henry L. (Henry Luther), 1821-1907. Henry L. Sheldon diaries, 1833-1907.

Henry L. Sheldon diaries, 1833-1907.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/731958221

Early diaries describing the work and activities of a teenaged boy in the 1830s; diaries written in the 1840s, when Sheldon was in his 20s, reflect his energetic participation in life, including comments on community growth and change, the weather, his work, family, and friends, and other activities, detailing his fascination with Rutland Railroad Company on which he travelled to Montreal and New York City, electricity, and the telegraph, as well as providing descriptions of his activities as organist at St. Stephen's Church and involvement with other musical events, Freemasons Union Lodge No. 2, trips to the circus and fair, coin collecting, and various illnesses. There is a gap between 1855 and 1863 and with it, the tone of the diaries changes. For the next 20 years he noted the weather and peak events in his life, but little of the community and the outside world or of his internal life. In the mid 1870s, his sense of life returned and the diaries are again rich in the details of his life and community. Sheldon founded the Sheldon Museum in 1882 and its development was a major preoccupation in his later years and is well documented in the diaries. While it was never Henry Sheldon's intention to write a history of his time, the diaries reveal as much about Middlebury in the middle and late 19th century as they do about the writer himself.

.8 linear ft. (2 boxes)

Sheldon Museum Research Center