Two pocket diaries kept by Lizzie Niles, who was a young, well-educated Quaker woman residing in West Oneonta, New York at the time. On the pages of these diaries she recorded a detailed, literate, and entertaining account of her social life, activities, and thoughts. She discloses the books she has read, letters written and received, and especially her longings for intellectual achievement, and her frustrations with the confining life to which she feels relegated. She also mentions important historical events of the time such as the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln.
