The Gratz Family Papers include at least two bound volumes and six travel diary fragments of Jewish women in the antebellum period (1807-1846). The first, dated 1807, recounts a trip taken by Rebecca Gratz from Louisville to Nashville in the early national period (6/3-12/8/1807). The second bound volume can be definitively attributed to Sarah G. Moses, although the handwriting in the other fragments bears some resemblance. Recorded between 8/9-11/2/1832, Moses' bound volume recounts Philadelphia local affairs, weather, her recreational activities (e.g. reading, sewing, and embroidery), education, and religious practices (Moses makes numerous mentions of going to "Synagogue"). Notably, she frets the cholera epidemic in an early entry, excerpted in Selected Quotations (8/9/1832). Two diary fragments recount travels from New York City upstate (7/27-8/6/1842) as well as a trip between Savannah and Richmond (commenced 4/30/1846). The remaining fragments were clearly recorded in the antebellum period, but are difficult to date: There's a fragment recounting a trip between Saint Louis and Lexington, another (possibly related) fragment that details a journey from Lexington through the Alleghenies and finally to Baltimore, and two distinct midwestern tours that take the diarist from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River and from Detroit to Cleveland. Notably, the latter journey must have been recorded sometime between the mid-1830s and mid-1840s, as it references an animated conversation with a Locofoco on a stagecoach (also excerpted in Selected Quotations). These fragments ought to interest scholars researching women's history, Jewish studies, and appalachia and the American South during the antebellum period.
 

John Lyon's botany journal offers a record of travels in the eastern U.S. at the turn of nineteenth century. The volume includes memoranda dated 1799, with entries spanning 9/6/1802-8/6/1814. Lyon's entries document expenses—plants purchased and collected—with occasional notes about the places and peoples he encounters. Entries related to his travels in the eastern and southeastern U.S. record a visit to plantations (4/23/1803), an Indian settlement in Georgia (7/19/1803), and medical treatments for palsy, jaundice, and cancer (12/1/1808). Notably, Lyon discusses an albino slave in Athens, Georgia, as excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/25/1804). In the spring of 1806, he records travel to Dublin, Liverpool, and London. Thus, while the Lyon journal will certainly appeal to researchers exploring nineteenth century botany, they also feature content with wider appeal, such as U.S. slavery, transatlantic travel, indigenous trade, and antebellum medicine.
 

The John Pershouse papers contain two volumes of genealogical data from the late-eighteenth century, two letter books thought to belong to his nephew (Henry Pershouse), and one travel journal. The journal is noteworthy because it furnishes accounts of transatlantic travel in the early national period. While the first entry notes Pershouse's departure from Liverpool to Boston on a 56-day voyage (2/1/1800), regular entries begin around 1826 and continue to late-1838. As a Philadelphia merchant, Pershouse regularly records distances, accounts, and sights in Europe and the United States. Notably, he travels on a ship under the command of a Captain Matlack (presumably Timothy Matlack), travels extensively in the U.S. Southeast and Midwest, and notes the outbreak of the Belgian Revolution in 1830—all excerpted in Selected Quotations. Researchers interested in U.S. domestic and transatlantic travel during the antebellum period ought to find this volume particularly useful.
 

The journal was printed in APS Proceedings 26 (1889):1. The Kentucky travels can be found in Reuben G. Thwaites' Early Western Travels, 1748-1846.

Michaux maintained travel journals during his excursions throughout North America between 1787-1796. These 10 volumes furnish accounts of Charleston (September 1787), Saint Augustine and the Bahamas (1787-88), the Savannah River (December 1788), and Kentucky shortly after statehood (1794-95). Notably, Michaux records at least one visit to David Rittenhouse and Thomas Jefferson (12/14/1793), and he makes a proposal to the American Philosophical Society to explore unknown regions beyond Missouri and Kentucky, which Jefferson, then Secretary of State, accepts (12/10/1792). French-reading researchers—the volumes are maintained entirely in French—ought to find that these volumes offer insights into Southern and Western exploration during the early national period.
 
The journal was printed in APS Proceedings 26 (1889):1. The Kentucky travels can be found in Reuben G. Thwaites' Early Western Travels, 1748-1846.

The Heiser diaries are without peer when it comes to their scope--spanning the first seven decades of the twentieth-century--global reach, and detail. Scholars exploring the history of medicine might gravitate towards entries related to his public health work in the Philippines (1908-1916). Researchers interested in the history of zionism will be richly rewarded by volumes from 1922 and 1926--an excerpt from Heiser's July 1922 journey to Palestine is excerpted in Selected Quotations. And those interested in colonial India will discover a numerous reflections on Gandhi and 1920s non-violent resistance movements (also excerpted in Selected Quotations).
 
Perhaps most surprising are Heiser's detailed accounts of European travel between the 1920s and 1930s, during which he expresses some sympathy for nationalist movements. Traveling war-torn Italy, he remarked on there "appears to be unanimous agreement among natives and foreigners" that the new prime minister, Benito Mussolini, "has accomplished extraordinary results and that he is honest and genuinely patriotic" (11/19/1923). Several years later, he documents the nation's progress in developing infrastructure and improving services. He concludes his 4/29/1926 entry with an ominous justification for fascism: "Democracy gradually became so inefficient that all came to a standstill and a dictator was able to start the machinery on an effective basis."
 
Heiser traveled widely during the decade preceding World War II. In the late-1930s, he returned to Italy and decries the ubiquitous military presence, government propaganda, and oppressive taxation. And yet, he ends his entry with a section entitled "The Other Side." Heiser writes: "A whole new social order has been created. Instead of people finding fault with what government fails in, the press and government propaganda constantly drive into their ears what government is doing for the people. (In the end will this not produce more peace of mind and happiness than our democratic way of emphasizing fault-finding)" (4/25/1937).
 
On the topic of promoting public happiness, Heiser draws a similar conclusion during a contemporaneous visit to Germany. While he decries the Nazi government's "censorship, prohibitions and [intrusion into] one's private affairs," he adds: "And yet one begins to wonder whether there is not much to be said in favor of the good type of dictatorships, in promoting human happiness. In democracies people are [annoyed] to say or think little of the good things government does for them and to place main emphasis upon petty fault finding" (6/3/1937). Finally, just one year prior to the outbreak of World War II, Heiser pens perhaps his most generous account of dictatorships. That account, "Further Impressions Dictatorships," is excerpted in Selected Quotations.

By any measure, public health leader Victor George Heiser lived a long, productive, and vigorous life. His 86 diaries (1890-1972) predate the Spanish-American War and post-date U.S. escalation in Vietnam, while his career in public health put him in contact with politicians, diplomats, ambassadors, and government officials across the globe. An astute political observer, Heiser offers rich, on-the-ground insights into twentieth-century history as it unfolded, from the rise of Gandhi to the fall of Hitler. His 1920s and 1930s entries also offer candid explanations of and justifications for dictatorship. The Heiser diaries may interest a wide range of scholars, including those researching the history of science, American public health policy in the Philippines, the history of Zionism and Israeli statehood, colonialism in Asia (most especially India), and Europe between World War I and World War II.
 
The Heiser diaries are without peer when it comes to their scope--spanning the first seven decades of the twentieth-century--global reach, and detail. Scholars exploring the history of medicine might gravitate towards entries related to his public health work in the Philippines (1908-1916). Researchers interested in the history of zionism will be richly rewarded by volumes from 1922 and 1926--an excerpt from Heiser's July 1922 journey to Palestine is excerpted in Selected Quotations. And those interested in colonial India will discover a numerous reflections on Gandhi and 1920s non-violent resistance movements (also excerpted in Selected Quotations).
 
Perhaps most surprising are Heiser's detailed accounts of European travel between the 1920s and 1930s, during which he expresses some sympathy for nationalist movements. Traveling war-torn Italy, he remarked on there "appears to be unanimous agreement among natives and foreigners" that the new prime minister, Benito Mussolini, "has accomplished extraordinary results and that he is honest and genuinely patriotic" (11/19/1923). Several years later, he documents the nation's progress in developing infrastructure and improving services. He concludes his 4/29/1926 entry with an ominous justification for fascism: "Democracy gradually became so inefficient that all came to a standstill and a dictator was able to start the machinery on an effective basis."
 
Heiser traveled widely during the decade preceding World War II. In the late-1930s, he returned to Italy and decries the ubiquitous military presence, government propaganda, and oppressive taxation. And yet, he ends his entry with a section entitled "The Other Side." Heiser writes: "A whole new social order has been created. Instead of people finding fault with what government fails in, the press and government propaganda constantly drive into their ears what government is doing for the people. (In the end will this not produce more peace of mind and happiness than our democratic way of emphasizing fault-finding)" (4/25/1937).
 
On the topic of promoting public happiness, Heiser draws a similar conclusion during a contemporaneous visit to Germany. While he decries the Nazi government's "censorship, prohibitions and [intrusion into] one's private affairs," he adds: "And yet one begins to wonder whether there is not much to be said in favor of the good type of dictatorships, in promoting human happiness. In democracies people are [annoyed] to say or think little of the good things government does for them and to place main emphasis upon petty fault finding" (6/3/1937). Finally, just one year prior to the outbreak of World War II, Heiser pens perhaps his most generous account of dictatorships. That account, "Further Impressions Dictatorships," is excerpted in Selected Quotations.