Harriet Verena Evans was born in Lancaster, Pa., on April 28, 1782, the daughter of John and Sarah Musser. On May 21, 1807, Harriet married Cadwalader Evans (1762-1841), a former surveyor who went on to a distinguished career in politics, as one of the directors of the Bank of the United States, a promoter of the Schuylkill Canal, and president of the Schuylkill Navigation Company. The couple had nine children, including a set of twins.
The diary of Harriet Verena Evans is an unusual example of a woman's spiritual diary from early national Philadelphia. Beginning on her 46th birthday in 1827, the same day her seventeen year-old son John died, Evans made sporadic entries in her diary for seventeen years, marking birthdays, holidays, special events, and anniversaries of various kinds. Fixated upon praying (or fretting) over her spiritual state and future, Evans continued to mourn over John's loss for many years, remembering him regularly on the date of his birth, death, and burial. She was also particularly prone to composing (or copying) religious poetry, and in sections, the diary verges on a poetical commonplace book. Other entries reveal Evans' concern for her other children, three of whom were students at the University of Pennsylvania, and on July 25, 1832, she made a particularly long entry discussing the arrival of the cholera in Philadelphia. The Cholera that awful scourge which has been so long feared, has at last reached our City, and filled us with dread and terror; every precaution that frail man could devise is resorted to, to meet the fell destroyer -- neither country nor town is exempt from its ravages -- there is no safety in flight. The God omnipotent has shewn us there is no dependence upon an arm of flesh, but has assured us, that if we make the Lord our refuge, and our God our defence, and commit ourselves to his most blessed will, and most righteous judgments, we need not fear the 'Pestilence that walketh on darkness nor the destruction that wasteth at noon day.' Evans used the final four pages of the diary to record family information, including the birth and, when relevant, death dates of her husband and children. There are also a small number of later additions.
1 vol., 240p.
Acquired from Carmen Valentino, Jan. 2001 (M2001-9).
Cite as: Harriet Verena Evans Diary, American Philosophical Society.
Catalogued by rsc, 2004.
This volume is the diary/commonplace book of Harriet Evans. It is often deeply religious. For a full description, please read the full MOLE entry.
