Grandfather’s diaries a window to the past

BREWER – Jean Lyford, 82, of Brewer has a window to family history that few people are lucky enough to have. She owns the 28 diaries her grandfather, William Thompson of Dexter, wrote from 1868 to 1925. She keeps them in an old wooden box, darkened with age, that has “Van Houton’s Cocoa” stenciled on its side.

“I feel as if I am right there with him,” she said of reading the diaries. Lyford, who is active in the Brewer Historical Society and Frances Dighton Williams Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, was only 2 years old in 1925 when her grandfather died, and she has no memory of him. But the diaries bridge that gap.

On April 2, 1898, he wrote the entry “Talk of war.” And on April 20, “War with Spain, 11:40 a.m.” Then on May 2, “News of a big battle at Manila Bay, Cuba. The Spanish war ships sunk.”

But for the most part, Lyford said, the diaries speak of the ordinary concerns of an ordinary man going about the days of his life.

I saw brother Thomas and he wanted me to goe up to his place and get a load of potatoes. I hauled down 24 Bushells for him. I got a letter from Mr. Hudson in Holbrook Mass. This has been a very fine day. I paid a giant bill on it, but 97 cents. We are at home all evening.

“Every day he and his wife had company,” Lyford said. “And those people stayed to dinner. Or they visited someone and stayed to dinner.”

On Dec. 24, 1897, Thompson wrote, “Abbott’s Mill shut down. 60 out of work.” The mill he referred to was the woolen mill in Dexter where Thompson sometimes worked.

The diaries are nearly identical, about the size of a paperback book. All but one is bound in black leather. The odd one is bound in red. Each one has a wraparound flap with a tab that slips into a little band to keep it closed. On the flyleaf of each one, William Thompson wrote in his clear, ornate penmanship his name and the year the diary was written.

Each diary is equipped with a folding pocket attached to the back cover where Thompson kept receipts. Some of those receipts are still in the pockets. Lyford drew out one that attested to the fact that in 1898, Thompson paid $1 for a subscription to the Bangor Daily Commercial newspaper. Another receipt showed that he paid $9.54 in state and county taxes in 1898.

Each diary has a little sleeve where a pencil was kept. The edges of the pages are decorated in shades of red and pink in a marbleized design that resembles a bargello needlepoint pattern.

Each diary contains a section for addresses, a ledger where Thompson noted amounts he paid out and took in, tables of weights and measures, a table for calculating interest, postal rates, poison antidotes, U.S. population data, legal holidays in every state of the Union, foreign currency values, a tide table and phases of the moon for each month of the year. One diary still has its pink blotter, which Thompson used to soak up excess ink after he had made a diary entry.

Thompson, Lyford said, was born May 12, 1843, in New Brunswick. Lyford is in the process of researching the town of his birth, the names of his parents and where he was educated. He was married twice, she said, and had four children from his first marriage. When that wife died, he married Ellen Taylor, Lyford’s grandmother.

Lyford said she has learned a lot about her grandfather by reading his diaries.

“He was meticulous about business dealings,” she said. “We don’t know where he was educated, but he appears to have been well-educated. His spelling and grammar are good. He was kind and honest, a man who kept his word and who paid his bills.”

Thompson was a carpenter and farmer, and the diaries reveal that he knew how to build skylights and bay windows and that he worked on the library in Dexter and the Methodist church in town. He also made cupboards, trunks, stools, ax handles and other tool handles in the woodshop at his farm.

As a farmer, Thompson grew a variety of apples, including King, Baldwin, Russet, Northern Spy and Wolf River. He grew crab apples, pears, grapes and currants, and cultivated a large vegetable garden each year. His diaries note that he sometimes churned as much as 18 pounds of butter, which he sold in town.

And on every page of his diaries, in true farmer fashion, he notes what the weather was that day.

Thompson also wrote at least two letters a day, Lyford said.

In 1889 the diaries reveal that Thompson and his family went to visit his brother and sister in Seattle. He rented his farm for $125 per year, traded some harness for a gold watch for his wife, sold the pigs and sold several cords of wood for $54 to the person who rented his farm. Then he boarded a train headed west.

“Reading the diaries are as good as reading a book,” Lyford said.