Diaries held at the American Philosophical Society

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1.Title:  Samuel W. Sellers, Jennie P. Sellers, and Jennie Haines Diaries (1834-1924)
 Dates:  1834 - 1924 
 Extent:  14 volumes  
 Locations:  Bowmansville | Chester | Kennett Township | Marlborough | Philadelphia | Pughtown | Romansville | Sandy River | West Chester, Pennsylvania | Wilmington 
 Abstract:  David Shinn Collection of Mary Christiana Sellers contains at least 14 diaries spanning nearly a century (1834-1923) and three generations of the Sellers family: Samuel W. Sellers, Jennie P. Sellers and Jennie Haines. Samuel Sellers, who served as justice of the peace in Chester County, furnishes the earliest and longest range of diaries (1834-1881). He maintained journals (most of which are unbound) between 3/1/1834-6/21/1851, 6/15/1851-8/17/1855 (as well as a separate volume for 8/18-11/14/1855), January 1857-October 1858, 11/12/1855-1/31/1875, and 1/3/1878-3/2/1881. Overall, his entries are short, though they record weather, births, deaths, local affairs, some transactions and accounts, and some national news. For example, he commemorates the death of President Polk (6/22/1849) and notes, with some disapproval, an anti-slavery meeting in West Chester staged shortly after the passage of the Compromise of 1850, excerpted in Selected Quotations (10/23/1850). His daughter, Jennie Sellers furnishes two of the most animated journals, particularly for scholars interested in Confederate sympathy in the U.S. North. In her diary from 1860, Jennie, then 16 years old, expresses some disgust with the recently elected president, Abraham Lincoln (March 1860). In her second diary, which traverses the end of the war (1/1/1864-3/20/1866), she records the surrender of General Lee (4/10/1865) assassination of Lincoln (4/15/1865), and funerial procession in Philadelphia (4/16/1865). Perhaps most remarkably, she includes an extended screed against Abraham Lincoln and in defense of John Wilkes Booth, which she may have copied from a local newspaper. That passage is excerpted at length in Selected Quotations. Finally, Jennie Seller's daughter, Jennie Haines furnishes six daybooks from 1887, 1898, 1901, 1904, 1908, and 1923. Maintained in Centennial, Standard, and Daily Reminder diaries, these bound volumes detail the weather, household chores (such as churning butter), visits to the market (often with grocery prices), and miscellaneous accounts. Some of the volumes include various ephemera in the back pockets. Although Jennie Haines rarely discusses national news, she does include at least one oblique reference to the Spanish-American War when she discusses the loss of the Battleship Maine (2/19/1898). 
    
 
    
David Shinn Collection of Mary Christiana Sellers contains at least 14 diaries spanning nearly a century (1834-1923) and three generations of the Sellers family: Samuel W. Sellers, Jennie P. Sellers and Jennie Haines. Samuel Sellers, who served as justice of the peace in Chester County, furnishes the earliest and longest range of diaries (1834-1881). He maintained journals (most of which are unbound) between 3/1/1834-6/21/1851, 6/15/1851-8/17/1855 (as well as a separate volume for 8/18-11/14/1855), January 1857-October 1858, 11/12/1855-1/31/1875, and 1/3/1878-3/2/1881. Overall, his entries are short, though they record weather, births, deaths, local affairs, some transactions and accounts, and some national news. For example, he commemorates the death of President Polk (6/22/1849) and notes, with some disapproval, an anti-slavery meeting in West Chester staged shortly after the passage of the Compromise of 1850, excerpted in Selected Quotations (10/23/1850). His daughter, Jennie Sellers furnishes two of the most animated journals, particularly for scholars interested in Confederate sympathy in the U.S. North. In her diary from 1860, Jennie, then 16 years old, expresses some disgust with the recently elected president, Abraham Lincoln (March 1860). In her second diary, which traverses the end of the war (1/1/1864-3/20/1866), she records the surrender of General Lee (4/10/1865) assassination of Lincoln (4/15/1865), and funerial procession in Philadelphia (4/16/1865). Perhaps most remarkably, she includes an extended screed against Abraham Lincoln and in defense of John Wilkes Booth, which she may have copied from a local newspaper. That passage is excerpted at length in Selected Quotations. Finally, Jennie Seller's daughter, Jennie Haines furnishes six daybooks from 1887, 1898, 1901, 1904, 1908, and 1923. Maintained in Centennial, Standard, and Daily Reminder diaries, these bound volumes detail the weather, household chores (such as churning butter), visits to the market (often with grocery prices), and miscellaneous accounts. Some of the volumes include various ephemera in the back pockets. Although Jennie Haines rarely discusses national news, she does include at least one oblique reference to the Spanish-American War when she discusses the loss of the Battleship Maine (2/19/1898).
 
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  Selected Quotations
  • Samuel Sellers on an Abolitionist Meeting in West Chester: "I understand that to day they had quite a disturbance at the Anti Slavery meeting in West Chester last week. They had a black man for President of the meeting, they passed resolution denouncing the Constitution, General Washington, the father of the Country, all all who favour Union of the States, as being unworthy of the countenance of the self styled decency party, and unworthy of the Kingdom of Heaven" (10/23/1850)

  • Jennie Sellers on Lincoln Assassination: "Edd. Griffith brought word from W. Chester that Abraham Lincoln, President of the Northern States, was shot last night at a theater (where I do not know) and that an attempt was made upon the life of W.H. Seward. I have not learned all the particulars yet. Susan Clark here this evening" (4/15/1865)

  • Jennie Sellers on Lincoln's Funeral: "[T]here is a great excitement in Philadelphia; they are fighting constantly, it takes the whole of the Police force of the City to keep any kind of order, stores all closed this morning" (4/16/1865)

  • Jennie Sellers on John Wilkes Booth: "Last night the 27th of April, a small rowboat received the carcass of the murderer; two men were in it; they carried the body off into the darkness, and out of that darkness it will never return; in the darkness, like his great crime, may it remain forever; impalpable, invisible, nondescript, condemned to that worse than damnation—annihilation. The river bottom may ooze about it laden with great shot and drowning [man]. The earth may have opened to give it that silence and forgiveness, which man will never give to memory. The fishes may swim around it, or the daisies grow white above it; but we shall ever know. Mysterious, incomprehensible, unattainable like the dim times through which we live; and think upon it as it we only dreamed them in perturbed fever. The assassination of a nation's head rests somewhere in the elements, and that is all; But if the indignant seas or the profaned turf shall ever vomit this corpse from their recesses, and it receives Christian burial from someone who does not recognize it, let the last words from those decaying lips ever uttered be carved above them with a dagger, to tell the history of a young and once promising life—useless, useless. Such is the fate of one, who whatever he done was not in my belief deserving such a fate, it will have to be decided by wiser heads than mine, which was the greatest criminal: Abraham Lincoln the wholesale butcherer or J. Wilkes Booth, who shot the greatest tyrant the world has known, but how different their burial. Lincoln, the tyrant, is embalmed, and paraded through the streets of our cities, or Lying in state in some of our public buildings for the curiosity of the people, the sympathy of some, flags are draped in mourning, while the word 'The Nation Mourns its Loss' is printed in letters of fire through all our papers. Booth, the Martyr, is taken off no one knows where, all the indignities a vengeful and fanatic party can think or say, is heaped up the head of one who has done more for American freedom than the whole of the Abolishion party combined together, what a contrast. Who ever thought that William Tell was an assassin? And yet Gesler was no more a tyrant than A. Lincoln. Tis said Charles the First was a tyrant, yet he never did violate the Constitution more than A. Lincoln, yet it is said he deserved his death. It is my opinion that Lincoln earned the bullet that sent him to his account, there to meet the slaughtered victims of his ambition, and the anger of a Just God. Jennie Sellers" (5/3/1865) [NB: some or all of this passage may have been transcribed from local newspapers.]

  • Jennie Haines on the loss of the Battleship Maine: "[T]here seemed to be a mystery why the vessel 'Maine' should be lost in Spanish waters, will be investigated, many think it no accident" (2/19/1898)
 
 Subjects:  Accounts. | American Civil War, 1861-1865 | Diaries. | Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Assassination. | Science. | Spanish-American War, 1898. | Weather. | Women--History. 
 Collection:  David Shinn Collection of Mary Christiana Sellers  (Mss.SMs.Coll.3)  
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