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.
 

The Evans journal begins on the day that her 17-year-old son John dies, cut down "in the bloom of health, in the beauty and vigour of youth" (4/28/1827). Over the next 17 years, the anniversaries of his birthday (2/5), death (4/29), and burial (5/1) serve as occasions for recollection and spiritual self-assessment. (So, too, do Christmas and New Year's Day.) Throughout the volume, Evans copies and composes scriptural and poetical verses that serve to transform her diary into a kind of commonplace book.
 
Although Evans regularly mourns the death of her son John, she also expresses concern for her other children, three of whom were enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania during a cholera outbreak. She writes, "The cholera that awful scourge which has been so long feared, has at last reached our city, and filled us with a dread and terror
 
every precaution that frail man could device is resorted to, to meet the fell destroyer—neither country nor town is exempt from its ravages" (7/25/1832).
 
Evans closes her journal on her 63rd birthday, 17 years after the death of her child, and "Sixteen years since I entered into Covenant with My God" (4/28/1844).

The Harriet Verena Evans journal is unlike any other in the APS collections. Evans began journaling late in life—on her 46th birthday, the same day that her 17-year-old son John died. Her recollections never stray far from that trauma. She returns to the death of her son with regularity, and his life appears to shape the form of her diary: she composes entries for exactly 17 years (4/28/1827-4/28/1844). The Evans diary is also unusual for its mode of composition. Interweaving homage to her son, scripture, religious self-assessment, and collected poetry, the Evans diary blends a woman's spiritual diary with a commonplace book. It is a remarkable volume that ought to interest researchers investigating women's history, antebellum mourning customs, and religious practice during the Second Great Awakening.
 
The Evans journal begins on the day that her 17-year-old son John dies, cut down "in the bloom of health, in the beauty and vigour of youth" (4/28/1827). Over the next 17 years, the anniversaries of his birthday (2/5), death (4/29), and burial (5/1) serve as occasions for recollection and spiritual self-assessment. (So, too, do Christmas and New Year's Day.) Throughout the volume, Evans copies and composes scriptural and poetical verses that serve to transform her diary into a kind of commonplace book.
 
Although Evans regularly mourns the death of her son John, she also expresses concern for her other children, three of whom were enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania during a cholera outbreak. She writes, "The cholera that awful scourge which has been so long feared, has at last reached our city, and filled us with a dread and terror
 
every precaution that frail man could device is resorted to, to meet the fell destroyer—neither country nor town is exempt from its ravages" (7/25/1832).
 
Evans closes her journal on her 63rd birthday, 17 years after the death of her child, and "Sixteen years since I entered into Covenant with My God" (4/28/1844).