The Chance Papers include two pocket diaries—and various undated notebooks—recorded during his study at Cambridge (1936 and 1942) and 14 pocket calendars spanning January 1950 to June 1951 (with the exception of August 1950 and January, April, and May 1951). These calendars include miscellaneous research notes, formulas, appointments, lectures, travel, and meetings. In fact, at least one entry (4/20/1950) notes a meeting with "Roughton," presumably Francis Roughton, for which APS also holds papers. The October 1950 calendar also includes what appear to be Chance's first impressions of numerous job or fellowship candidates. Those include a "Maison," whom he describes as a "real 'tough guy,'" and a "Brokerk," whom he praises "good appearance, clean-cut, good talker, good manner' but adds "has done sound but not outstanding research. Surely no Nobel prize winner."
 
Two personal notebooks, dated "April 1983" and "January 1980," include Chance's lengthiest and most unusual records. The 1980 notebook features haphazard notes with names, phone numbers, appointment times that continue as late as December 2000. Researchers will also discover a trove of ephemera interspersed in the pages, including appointment cards (e.g. "Male Fertilization Section"), post-it notes, stress test consent forms, a heart diagram, and even a letter from Penn concerning a biopsy. The 1983 notebook, which spans April 12 and June 16, appears to be a record of Chance's ballroom dancing. (Yes, you read that correctly.) While much of this notebook is empty, early pages include a schedule for ballroom dancing classes and notes regarding the Foxtrot, Rhumba, Cha-Cha, Tango, and other dances.
 
Researchers investigating Chance's career may also consult his lab binders, some of which feature dated entries (Series III). As a yachtsman, he also records weather conditions in some loose, dated pages (Series X, boxes 516 and 517).

The Britton Chance Papers include two pocket diaries dated 1936 and 1942, 14 pocket calendars maintained between 1950 and 1951, and two personal notebooks dated January 1980 and April 1983. In aggregate, these materials traverse his doctoral study at Cambridge and his career at the University of Pennsylvania. His diaries may interest researchers examining Chance's research and the fields of biochemistry and biophysics more generally.
 
The Chance Papers include two pocket diaries—and various undated notebooks—recorded during his study at Cambridge (1936 and 1942) and 14 pocket calendars spanning January 1950 to June 1951 (with the exception of August 1950 and January, April, and May 1951). These calendars include miscellaneous research notes, formulas, appointments, lectures, travel, and meetings. In fact, at least one entry (4/20/1950) notes a meeting with "Roughton," presumably Francis Roughton, for which APS also holds papers. The October 1950 calendar also includes what appear to be Chance's first impressions of numerous job or fellowship candidates. Those include a "Maison," whom he describes as a "real 'tough guy,'" and a "Brokerk," whom he praises "good appearance, clean-cut, good talker, good manner' but adds "has done sound but not outstanding research. Surely no Nobel prize winner."
 
Two personal notebooks, dated "April 1983" and "January 1980," include Chance's lengthiest and most unusual records. The 1980 notebook features haphazard notes with names, phone numbers, appointment times that continue as late as December 2000. Researchers will also discover a trove of ephemera interspersed in the pages, including appointment cards (e.g. "Male Fertilization Section"), post-it notes, stress test consent forms, a heart diagram, and even a letter from Penn concerning a biopsy. The 1983 notebook, which spans April 12 and June 16, appears to be a record of Chance's ballroom dancing. (Yes, you read that correctly.) While much of this notebook is empty, early pages include a schedule for ballroom dancing classes and notes regarding the Foxtrot, Rhumba, Cha-Cha, Tango, and other dances.
 
Researchers investigating Chance's career may also consult his lab binders, some of which feature dated entries (Series III). As a yachtsman, he also records weather conditions in some loose, dated pages (Series X, boxes 516 and 517).

The Cassin diaries are contained in six volumes. The first, spanning 1865-66, documents his travel by steamer. Cassin records crossing the equator (7/30/1865), visiting a volcano at Cape Verde (7/25/1865), and arriving in Brazil. Enterprising researchers might research his course using the longitudes and latitudes he records throughout this volume.
 
The second volume picks up more than a year later and commits significant attention to the medical profession. The first entry voices concern about the medical department at the University of Pennsylvania (12/10/1868), and subsequent pages enclose copies of letters from 1869, including his committee appointments, especially Assistant Surgeon in the Navy (4/2/1869). Sequential entries begin in earnest on 5/6/1869, when Cassin recounts his travels aboard the brig Ohieflaua from the Chicago Harbor to Lake St. Clair.
 
Cassin's third and fourth volumes are less descriptive but remarkable for the extent of his travels. In his 1870 "New York" diary, Cassin notes another journey to Brazil in June, South China Sea in August, and Hong Kong and Shanghai in September. His 1870-71 diary dovetails with the latter, recording a trip to Rio de Janeiro (6/6/1870) and undated notes pertaining to a voyage to South Africa. Once again, Cassin captures many longitudes and latitudes.
 
The "Clayton's Octovo Diary 1872" is perhaps the richest from an ethnographic perspective. Cassin provides detailed accounts of visits to Key West (2/10/1872), Havana and Matanzas (between February and April 1872), and even a brief reflection on the act of journaling. "A diary is something like a resolve to call professionally on a dentist
 
you may keep it, but the chances are much in the favor of your putting it off," Cassin observes on 4/26/7182. "Diary writing is almost the stupidest thing that I know of, unless one can make a writing task in no other way." Between May and June 1872, he travels throughout the Caribbean, furnishing descriptions of the peoples and villages he encounters. Interested researchers will find a particularly evocative entry of Key West society women in a 6/21/1872 quotation below.
 
A Pocket Diary dated 1875, finds Cassin landlocked, maintaining a more traditional journal of meetings, calls, letters, and weather conditions. The volume opens in St. Louis where he has apparently purchased a home, and it is not until September that he begins to travel again. That fall he returns to Brazil (11/6) and visits Uruguay (12/1).

Serving as a U.S. Navy physician, Charles Luke Cassin traveled extensively, recording firsthand accounts of Brazil, Canada, South Africa, the South China Sea, and the Caribbean during the postbellum period. His six-volume journal, which spans 1865-1875, offers glimpses at those far flung locations and the various peoples who inhabited them. Cassin's journals ought to appeal to a wide range of researchers, including those interested in the history of seafaring, the West Indies, ethnography, and late-eighteenth-century medical practices.
 
The Cassin diaries are contained in six volumes. The first, spanning 1865-66, documents his travel by steamer. Cassin records crossing the equator (7/30/1865), visiting a volcano at Cape Verde (7/25/1865), and arriving in Brazil. Enterprising researchers might research his course using the longitudes and latitudes he records throughout this volume.
 
The second volume picks up more than a year later and commits significant attention to the medical profession. The first entry voices concern about the medical department at the University of Pennsylvania (12/10/1868), and subsequent pages enclose copies of letters from 1869, including his committee appointments, especially Assistant Surgeon in the Navy (4/2/1869). Sequential entries begin in earnest on 5/6/1869, when Cassin recounts his travels aboard the brig Ohieflaua from the Chicago Harbor to Lake St. Clair.
 
Cassin's third and fourth volumes are less descriptive but remarkable for the extent of his travels. In his 1870 "New York" diary, Cassin notes another journey to Brazil in June, South China Sea in August, and Hong Kong and Shanghai in September. His 1870-71 diary dovetails with the latter, recording a trip to Rio de Janeiro (6/6/1870) and undated notes pertaining to a voyage to South Africa. Once again, Cassin captures many longitudes and latitudes.
 
The "Clayton's Octovo Diary 1872" is perhaps the richest from an ethnographic perspective. Cassin provides detailed accounts of visits to Key West (2/10/1872), Havana and Matanzas (between February and April 1872), and even a brief reflection on the act of journaling. "A diary is something like a resolve to call professionally on a dentist
 
you may keep it, but the chances are much in the favor of your putting it off," Cassin observes on 4/26/7182. "Diary writing is almost the stupidest thing that I know of, unless one can make a writing task in no other way." Between May and June 1872, he travels throughout the Caribbean, furnishing descriptions of the peoples and villages he encounters. Interested researchers will find a particularly evocative entry of Key West society women in a 6/21/1872 quotation below.
 
A Pocket Diary dated 1875, finds Cassin landlocked, maintaining a more traditional journal of meetings, calls, letters, and weather conditions. The volume opens in St. Louis where he has apparently purchased a home, and it is not until September that he begins to travel again. That fall he returns to Brazil (11/6) and visits Uruguay (12/1).

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).

The first three volumes in the Albert C. Peale Papers are the most idiosyncratic. They include a daybook with weather observations (3/10-5/18/1864), a diary associated with a tour of Washington, D.C. during President Andrew Johnson's administration (c.1865-1869), and a lecture notebook pertaining to studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Of those early volumes, A. C. Peale's diary of his tour of Washington D.C. is perhaps most noteworthy. It recounts his travels from Philadelphia through Wilmington and Baltimore, tours of monuments and government buildings, including the U.S. Patent Office, Government Printing Office, and White House, and a handshake with President Johnson during that tour (2/7/1865).
 
The remaining six diaries (1872-1877) are devoted to various western expeditions in what is today Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. In his first diary (5/15-7/20/1872), A. C. Peale recounts his travel by rail from Philadelphia to Omaha, from which he would conduct his western expeditions. The second volume (5/29-8/15/1873), devotes significant attention to his mineralogical work, including gathering fossils, documenting canyons and volcanic peaks, and ascending various peaks and plateaus. Notably, he references photographer William Henry Jackson, who he writes "disturbed us to take a picture." (8/8/1873). The next two diaries (8/16-10/26/1873 and 5/14/1873-7/18/1874) recount the movement of the party over the next year, most especially campsites, weather problems, and travel constraints. The latter volume also records trip to Savannah (11/20/1873) and includes some accounts in the back of the journal.
 
The final two volumes continue in much the same vein, but offer records of interactions with Bannock and Shosoni Indians. The diary dated 7/19-11/10/1874 documents A. C. Peale's expeditions along branches of the Gunnison River, during which he encounters local tribes on multiple occasions (8/29/1874 and 9/20/1874). The final diary (5/27-10/9/1877), which corresponds with trips into western Wyoming, records numerous interactions with Bannock and Shosoni. For example, A. C. Peale writes that a Shosoni woman shares news of a fight between the whites and the Sioux (6/7/1877), and he commends the English of Bannock outside a ranch near Smith Fork (6/29/1877). Not all interactions are harmonious, however. A. C. Peale also records that Bannock kill two teamsters (8/8/1877) and that one of his his party (Gibbon) loses 300 new guns in a fight (8/23/1877).

Albert C. Peale Papers contain nine volumes that might be classified as diaries. These volumes traverse the American Civil War and Reconstruction period (1864-1877) and provide a window into the exploration and conquest of what is today Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The great-grandson of Charles Willson Peale, Albert Charles Peale was a prominent geologist in and author of numerous books in geology, mineralogy, and paleobotany. His journals offer a glimpse into his contributions to the Ferdinand Hayden expeditions, which explored and mapped the western United States. In furnishing numerous accounts of local indigenous peoples, including the Bannock and Shosoni, these volumes may interest scholars researching Native America, western exploration, the fields of geology and mineralogy, and the history of science.
 
The first three volumes in the Albert C. Peale Papers are the most idiosyncratic. They include a daybook with weather observations (3/10-5/18/1864), a diary associated with a tour of Washington, D.C. during President Andrew Johnson's administration (c.1865-1869), and a lecture notebook pertaining to studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Of those early volumes, A. C. Peale's diary of his tour of Washington D.C. is perhaps most noteworthy. It recounts his travels from Philadelphia through Wilmington and Baltimore, tours of monuments and government buildings, including the U.S. Patent Office, Government Printing Office, and White House, and a handshake with President Johnson during that tour (2/7/1865).
 
The remaining six diaries (1872-1877) are devoted to various western expeditions in what is today Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. In his first diary (5/15-7/20/1872), A. C. Peale recounts his travel by rail from Philadelphia to Omaha, from which he would conduct his western expeditions. The second volume (5/29-8/15/1873), devotes significant attention to his mineralogical work, including gathering fossils, documenting canyons and volcanic peaks, and ascending various peaks and plateaus. Notably, he references photographer William Henry Jackson, who he writes "disturbed us to take a picture." (8/8/1873). The next two diaries (8/16-10/26/1873 and 5/14/1873-7/18/1874) recount the movement of the party over the next year, most especially campsites, weather problems, and travel constraints. The latter volume also records trip to Savannah (11/20/1873) and includes some accounts in the back of the journal.
 
The final two volumes continue in much the same vein, but offer records of interactions with Bannock and Shosoni Indians. The diary dated 7/19-11/10/1874 documents A. C. Peale's expeditions along branches of the Gunnison River, during which he encounters local tribes on multiple occasions (8/29/1874 and 9/20/1874). The final diary (5/27-10/9/1877), which corresponds with trips into western Wyoming, records numerous interactions with Bannock and Shosoni. For example, A. C. Peale writes that a Shosoni woman shares news of a fight between the whites and the Sioux (6/7/1877), and he commends the English of Bannock outside a ranch near Smith Fork (6/29/1877). Not all interactions are harmonious, however. A. C. Peale also records that Bannock kill two teamsters (8/8/1877) and that one of his his party (Gibbon) loses 300 new guns in a fight (8/23/1877).

The Smith and Houston families comprise the bulk of the diary holdings, though the collection also includes diaries from the Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner families. Smith Family
 
In the Smith family, journals were maintained by George and Gertrude Smith, Lewis Lawrence Smith, Benjamin H. Smith, A. Lewis Smith, Harry C. Smith, and Margaretta Smith. Contained within them are accounts France and England in the late-nineteenth century (The Lewis Lawrence Smith European travel diary), Niagara Falls and the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s (Smith Western Trip Notebook), reports from the Franco-Prussian War (Benjamin H. Smith's 1870 diary), accounts of antebellum dentistry (A. Lewis Smith diary, dated 3/31/1856), and turn of the century university life (Harry C. Smith diaries). Two sets of papers in this collection deserve special attention, especially for researchers interested in women's history: the George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers and the diaries of Margaretta Mary Wood (later Margaretta Mary Smith).
 
The George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers include five diaries that span 1859-1906, the first of which is signed by a Margaret Smith, wife of Dr. George Smith (1859). That volumes features accounts of religious services and prayer meetings, domestic activities (e.g. chess playing, sewing, and dressmaking, social affairs), recreation (including sleighing, learning to ice skate, and a "royal game of ball" on 3/10), and family affairs, including both a funeral (2/20) and wedding (4/28/1859). Getrude Smith's entries provide glimpses into her interior life, including her reading and her private interpretation of religion and morality. For example, she writes: "Dr. George [Frumar?] preached a long sermon—discoursed on war, oath, &c, the beginning of the Society of Friends, the object in keeping silence—other societies. Stated that present-time would be looked on as a dark period by future Christian worlds" (9/4). Alongside person ruminations, Smith's diary also notes numerous visits to Haverford College, a summer trip into Wyoming Valley (beginning 8/4), two solar eclipses (2/17 and 7/29), and her father's visit to an insane asylum (11/3).
 
Traversing the 54-year period of 1860-1914, Margaretta Smith's diaries provide a thorough and near-continuous account of her adult life, which spanned from the Civil War to the outbreak of the first World War. While Smith's accounts of the lived experience of the Civil War are arguably this collection's greatest treasure, her subsequent diaries provide glimpses at postbellum religion, natural disasters, politics, as well as early-twentieth century domesticity.
 
Smith offers accounts of weather, travel by carriage, train, and ship (especially during an 1875 European trip), records of personal affairs such as family visits, weddings, funerals, and personal health troubles (especially her struggle with "neuralgia," marked by crippling headaches), house chores (e.g. cooking, baking, making preserves, sewing, and making ice cream), and recreational activities (including horseback riding, skating, sledding, sleighing, chess, checkers, walks, and piano-playing). Like many of her peers, she keeps careful track of her reading (including Thackeray, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and even John Brown) and, thanks to her marriage to Dr. George Smith, she regularly attended lectures, meetings, and commencements at Haverford. She provides firsthand accounts of the Blizzards of 1888 and 1899 (March 1888 and February 1899), and records the election of President Grant (11/4/1868), and assassination of and funeral for President McKinley (9/14-9/19/1901).
 
Most remarkably, however, Smith provides a first-hand account of the outbreak and resolution of the Civil War. She presages the outbreak of war, recording the news that "Fort [Sumter] is besieged" (1/4/1861), the "warlike news" following Mississippi's secession (1/10/1861), and noting fears about "what will become of the Union" (1/12/1861). After the outbreak of the war, Smith thirsts for news, relaying small and large developments. Smith's hopefulness for peace surfaces in early entries. For example, on New Years' Eve 1861, she writes, "A great country in the midst of a civil war! What shall we look for in the New Year. Peace, I trust." However, she nevertheless records attacks as she learns of them, including Fort Sumter (4/15/1861), the Battle of Bull Run (7/22/1861), the surrender of Fort Henry (2/8/1862) and Fort Donelson (2/16/1862), and the Battles of Shiloh (4/9/1862), Antietam (9/10/1862), Fredericksburg (12/15/1862), Gettysburg (7/6/1863), and Chattanooga (11/27/1863). Houston's limited access to information—she often received news via visitors to her home—reveals the slow and uneven pace at which information disseminated during the war. For example, she records the death of Confederate General Johnstone on 4/14/1862, despite the fact that he died a week earlier. Elsewhere, she appears to have access to news print, namely the Atlantic Monthly, which she cites on more than one occasion. In an 8/26/1863 she writes, "Report of English building several iron-clads to send over and assist the Rebels!" By 1864, Smith devotes fewer accounts to military defeats and victories, perhaps because she has grown inured to the bloodshed. Regarding the movements of Confederate soldiers into Chambersburg, she writes, "this does not cause the same alarm that it would two years ago" (7/20/1864). Nevertheless, the war continues to surface in her day-to-day life: she and George board Union soldiers in their home (5/21/1861 and 1/28/1865), see Confederate soldiers in the hospital (8/18/1863), and pass wounded soldiers in train cars (5/23/1864).
 
Civil War historians will find the key events commemorated at length. Those include the Emancipation Proclamation (1/11863)
 
the Battle of Five Forks (4/2-3/1865), which Smith celebrates as something like the end of the war
 
and the assassination of and funeral for Abraham Lincoln, which she records in a series of rich entries spanning 4/15-27/1865. Here, and earlier (e.g. 1/4/1863), Smith takes heart from Lucretia Mott, whom she credits "made a few beautiful remarks on the propriety of silent grief" (4/19/1863).
 
Houston Family
 
The Houston family papers features diaries from "CHS" Houston, Henry Howard Houston II, and Eleanor Houston. The "CHSH Addresses & Notebooks" box includes 20 account books, address books, and notebooks and four diaries spanning 1907-1945. The first diary is perhaps the most unusual: unsigned and undated, with a copyright of 1892, the diarist appears to have contributed entries as early as 1907 and as late as 1931. In some instances, one page features entries from multiple years. For example, November 5 includes a header note from 1931 and a diary entry from 1912 that celebrates the election of Woodrow Wilson. The lengthiest entries relate to a European trip taking in the summer of 1920, during which the diarist notes travel by train and boat, sightseeing, cultural sites, and shopping.
 
The Henry Howard Houston II Papers contain three diaries that span 1913-1917. The first, "Ward's A Line a Day Book," traverses Houston's tenure at Chestnut Hill Academy and the University of Pennsylvania (8/15/1913-3/25/1916). Most entries foreground his recreational activities, including dinners, parties, dances, balls, Greek life, sports (golf, cricket, tennis, swimming, sailing, soccer, and horseback riding), and leisure activities (which Houston variously refers to as "bumming" and "fooling around"). Researchers interested in his studies might also refer to an undated pocket journal that Houston appears to have maintained during a poetry composition class. The second diary, maintained in a French "Agenda" book, picks up less than a year later after Houston volunteered for the American Field Ambulance Service near Verdun, France. These entries (2/1-3/31/1917) reflect a remarkably different young man, who records in unusual detail the horrors of trench warfare. These diary entries present a trove for World War I scholars: Houston describes shell holes along the roadside (3/12/1917), the green light exuded during night shelling (3/14/1917), and the experience of shelling (3/16-3/18/1917). Notably, Houston declares himself a pacifist after a two-day shelling campaign (March 18). He would die on a French airfield a little more than a year later. Entries recorded between 3/11-3/25/1917 are also available in loose, typed pages in a separate box.
 
A prolific diarist, Eleanor Houston Smith maintained some 87 diaries as well various ancillary notebooks spanning 1922-1931 and 1938-1986. These diaries provide glimpses into Eleanor Houston Smith's childhood travels, education, and professional life, especially her conservation work in Maine.
 
As a child, she maintained six diaries related to trips taken in 1920 and 1927. While European scholars may value her accounts of European sites, the 1920 diaries, in particular, may interest World War I historians. The first diary, contained in a black journal entitled "My Trip Abroad" (7/2-9/7/1920) chronicles a trip to Paris that includes occasional allusions to past destruction. For example, Houston notes that Varennes had been "absolutely destroyed," and calls it one of the "saddest and dirtiest" places they visit (8/24/1920). A second diary, a red "My Trip Abroad," picks up where the first left off (9/9-10/5/1920) and includes further references to the war as well as images of the destruction (912-13/1920). Several other diaries furnish accounts of a second trip to Europe six years later.
 
Eleanor Houston Smith maintained diaries throughout her childhood and early adulthood using a variety of different types of notebooks. In some instances, she maintained more than one diary per year (e.g. 1927 and 1931), and others she consolidates multiples years in a single notebook (e.g. 1927-29 and 1924-25). These 10 notebooks include accounts of family travels in the west (summer 1922), her schooling in Paris (1926-27), visits to Yorktown and Jamestown (1931), and San Francisco's Chinatown and Mission districts (1922). Most entries emphasize her early education, secular and religious (including continued attendance of Sunday School) and her studies (e.g. French, music, painting, and golf lessons), though Houston also provides some account of her leisure time, such as play rehearsals, shopping, and socializing with friends. Perhaps most interesting for researchers interested in aviation, Houston notes that she "listened to radio reports of Byrd's flight"—an early nonstop trans-Atlantic flight—in an entry dated 6/30/1927.
 
Houston's subsequent diaries (1928-1986) are maintained in appointment books, engagement books, calendars, and daybooks. These diaries provide accounts of her personal affairs, including French lessons, opera and theater attendance, birthdays, weddings, lunches and dinners, hair and dentist appointments, and various notes about "world affairs." Perhaps most valuable for Houston scholars, her diaries record her conservation work in Maine, as well as the organizations with which she worked at both a national and international (e.g. UNESCO and Conservation Council) and local level (Athenaeum, Franklin Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania).
 
Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner Families
 
Finally, the Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers also include diaries maintained by William Morris (an 1865 travel diary), Sarah Ogden (a diary dated August 1836), Thomas and Sarah Clemson (two diaries spanning 1854-1855 and 1863), and Josey and Mary Minor Kenner (two diaries with entries spanning 1849-1897). While each of these volumes warrants examination, the Sarah O. (Meredith) Ogden diary might appeal to researchers studying women's history. In a brief "diary" of eight loose manuscript pages dated August 1836, Ogden purports to offer a "mother's detached thoughts and memories, recorded for her children." In execution, Ogden's entries concerning her daughter Gertrude are anything but detached. Traversing both the concrete (such as a tooth extraction) and the abstract (praise for her daughter's imagination, memory, and childlike "intellect"), Ogden's entries are as much a record of her daughter's childhood as they are a window into Ogden's experience as a parent and spiritual guardian.

The sprawling collection of the Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers feature at least 179 volumes of diaries that traverse the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The majority of the diaries were maintained by the Smith and Houston families (79 volumes and 94 volumes, respectively); however, members of the Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner families also kept journals. Reading across these collections, researchers will uncover textured accounts of the Philadelphia centennial exhibition, war, science, religion, nineteenth-century education and conduct, and women's history in antebellum and postbellum America.
 
The Smith and Houston families comprise the bulk of the diary holdings, though the collection also includes diaries from the Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner families. Smith Family
 
In the Smith family, journals were maintained by George and Gertrude Smith, Lewis Lawrence Smith, Benjamin H. Smith, A. Lewis Smith, Harry C. Smith, and Margaretta Smith. Contained within them are accounts France and England in the late-nineteenth century (The Lewis Lawrence Smith European travel diary), Niagara Falls and the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s (Smith Western Trip Notebook), reports from the Franco-Prussian War (Benjamin H. Smith's 1870 diary), accounts of antebellum dentistry (A. Lewis Smith diary, dated 3/31/1856), and turn of the century university life (Harry C. Smith diaries). Two sets of papers in this collection deserve special attention, especially for researchers interested in women's history: the George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers and the diaries of Margaretta Mary Wood (later Margaretta Mary Smith).
 
The George Smith and Gertrude Smith Papers include five diaries that span 1859-1906, the first of which is signed by a Margaret Smith, wife of Dr. George Smith (1859). That volumes features accounts of religious services and prayer meetings, domestic activities (e.g. chess playing, sewing, and dressmaking, social affairs), recreation (including sleighing, learning to ice skate, and a "royal game of ball" on 3/10), and family affairs, including both a funeral (2/20) and wedding (4/28/1859). Getrude Smith's entries provide glimpses into her interior life, including her reading and her private interpretation of religion and morality. For example, she writes: "Dr. George [Frumar?] preached a long sermon—discoursed on war, oath, &c, the beginning of the Society of Friends, the object in keeping silence—other societies. Stated that present-time would be looked on as a dark period by future Christian worlds" (9/4). Alongside person ruminations, Smith's diary also notes numerous visits to Haverford College, a summer trip into Wyoming Valley (beginning 8/4), two solar eclipses (2/17 and 7/29), and her father's visit to an insane asylum (11/3).
 
Traversing the 54-year period of 1860-1914, Margaretta Smith's diaries provide a thorough and near-continuous account of her adult life, which spanned from the Civil War to the outbreak of the first World War. While Smith's accounts of the lived experience of the Civil War are arguably this collection's greatest treasure, her subsequent diaries provide glimpses at postbellum religion, natural disasters, politics, as well as early-twentieth century domesticity.
 
Smith offers accounts of weather, travel by carriage, train, and ship (especially during an 1875 European trip), records of personal affairs such as family visits, weddings, funerals, and personal health troubles (especially her struggle with "neuralgia," marked by crippling headaches), house chores (e.g. cooking, baking, making preserves, sewing, and making ice cream), and recreational activities (including horseback riding, skating, sledding, sleighing, chess, checkers, walks, and piano-playing). Like many of her peers, she keeps careful track of her reading (including Thackeray, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and even John Brown) and, thanks to her marriage to Dr. George Smith, she regularly attended lectures, meetings, and commencements at Haverford. She provides firsthand accounts of the Blizzards of 1888 and 1899 (March 1888 and February 1899), and records the election of President Grant (11/4/1868), and assassination of and funeral for President McKinley (9/14-9/19/1901).
 
Most remarkably, however, Smith provides a first-hand account of the outbreak and resolution of the Civil War. She presages the outbreak of war, recording the news that "Fort [Sumter] is besieged" (1/4/1861), the "warlike news" following Mississippi's secession (1/10/1861), and noting fears about "what will become of the Union" (1/12/1861). After the outbreak of the war, Smith thirsts for news, relaying small and large developments. Smith's hopefulness for peace surfaces in early entries. For example, on New Years' Eve 1861, she writes, "A great country in the midst of a civil war! What shall we look for in the New Year. Peace, I trust." However, she nevertheless records attacks as she learns of them, including Fort Sumter (4/15/1861), the Battle of Bull Run (7/22/1861), the surrender of Fort Henry (2/8/1862) and Fort Donelson (2/16/1862), and the Battles of Shiloh (4/9/1862), Antietam (9/10/1862), Fredericksburg (12/15/1862), Gettysburg (7/6/1863), and Chattanooga (11/27/1863). Houston's limited access to information—she often received news via visitors to her home—reveals the slow and uneven pace at which information disseminated during the war. For example, she records the death of Confederate General Johnstone on 4/14/1862, despite the fact that he died a week earlier. Elsewhere, she appears to have access to news print, namely the Atlantic Monthly, which she cites on more than one occasion. In an 8/26/1863 she writes, "Report of English building several iron-clads to send over and assist the Rebels!" By 1864, Smith devotes fewer accounts to military defeats and victories, perhaps because she has grown inured to the bloodshed. Regarding the movements of Confederate soldiers into Chambersburg, she writes, "this does not cause the same alarm that it would two years ago" (7/20/1864). Nevertheless, the war continues to surface in her day-to-day life: she and George board Union soldiers in their home (5/21/1861 and 1/28/1865), see Confederate soldiers in the hospital (8/18/1863), and pass wounded soldiers in train cars (5/23/1864).
 
Civil War historians will find the key events commemorated at length. Those include the Emancipation Proclamation (1/11863)
 
the Battle of Five Forks (4/2-3/1865), which Smith celebrates as something like the end of the war
 
and the assassination of and funeral for Abraham Lincoln, which she records in a series of rich entries spanning 4/15-27/1865. Here, and earlier (e.g. 1/4/1863), Smith takes heart from Lucretia Mott, whom she credits "made a few beautiful remarks on the propriety of silent grief" (4/19/1863).
 
Houston Family
 
The Houston family papers features diaries from "CHS" Houston, Henry Howard Houston II, and Eleanor Houston. The "CHSH Addresses & Notebooks" box includes 20 account books, address books, and notebooks and four diaries spanning 1907-1945. The first diary is perhaps the most unusual: unsigned and undated, with a copyright of 1892, the diarist appears to have contributed entries as early as 1907 and as late as 1931. In some instances, one page features entries from multiple years. For example, November 5 includes a header note from 1931 and a diary entry from 1912 that celebrates the election of Woodrow Wilson. The lengthiest entries relate to a European trip taking in the summer of 1920, during which the diarist notes travel by train and boat, sightseeing, cultural sites, and shopping.
 
The Henry Howard Houston II Papers contain three diaries that span 1913-1917. The first, "Ward's A Line a Day Book," traverses Houston's tenure at Chestnut Hill Academy and the University of Pennsylvania (8/15/1913-3/25/1916). Most entries foreground his recreational activities, including dinners, parties, dances, balls, Greek life, sports (golf, cricket, tennis, swimming, sailing, soccer, and horseback riding), and leisure activities (which Houston variously refers to as "bumming" and "fooling around"). Researchers interested in his studies might also refer to an undated pocket journal that Houston appears to have maintained during a poetry composition class. The second diary, maintained in a French "Agenda" book, picks up less than a year later after Houston volunteered for the American Field Ambulance Service near Verdun, France. These entries (2/1-3/31/1917) reflect a remarkably different young man, who records in unusual detail the horrors of trench warfare. These diary entries present a trove for World War I scholars: Houston describes shell holes along the roadside (3/12/1917), the green light exuded during night shelling (3/14/1917), and the experience of shelling (3/16-3/18/1917). Notably, Houston declares himself a pacifist after a two-day shelling campaign (March 18). He would die on a French airfield a little more than a year later. Entries recorded between 3/11-3/25/1917 are also available in loose, typed pages in a separate box.
 
A prolific diarist, Eleanor Houston Smith maintained some 87 diaries as well various ancillary notebooks spanning 1922-1931 and 1938-1986. These diaries provide glimpses into Eleanor Houston Smith's childhood travels, education, and professional life, especially her conservation work in Maine.
 
As a child, she maintained six diaries related to trips taken in 1920 and 1927. While European scholars may value her accounts of European sites, the 1920 diaries, in particular, may interest World War I historians. The first diary, contained in a black journal entitled "My Trip Abroad" (7/2-9/7/1920) chronicles a trip to Paris that includes occasional allusions to past destruction. For example, Houston notes that Varennes had been "absolutely destroyed," and calls it one of the "saddest and dirtiest" places they visit (8/24/1920). A second diary, a red "My Trip Abroad," picks up where the first left off (9/9-10/5/1920) and includes further references to the war as well as images of the destruction (912-13/1920). Several other diaries furnish accounts of a second trip to Europe six years later.
 
Eleanor Houston Smith maintained diaries throughout her childhood and early adulthood using a variety of different types of notebooks. In some instances, she maintained more than one diary per year (e.g. 1927 and 1931), and others she consolidates multiples years in a single notebook (e.g. 1927-29 and 1924-25). These 10 notebooks include accounts of family travels in the west (summer 1922), her schooling in Paris (1926-27), visits to Yorktown and Jamestown (1931), and San Francisco's Chinatown and Mission districts (1922). Most entries emphasize her early education, secular and religious (including continued attendance of Sunday School) and her studies (e.g. French, music, painting, and golf lessons), though Houston also provides some account of her leisure time, such as play rehearsals, shopping, and socializing with friends. Perhaps most interesting for researchers interested in aviation, Houston notes that she "listened to radio reports of Byrd's flight"—an early nonstop trans-Atlantic flight—in an entry dated 6/30/1927.
 
Houston's subsequent diaries (1928-1986) are maintained in appointment books, engagement books, calendars, and daybooks. These diaries provide accounts of her personal affairs, including French lessons, opera and theater attendance, birthdays, weddings, lunches and dinners, hair and dentist appointments, and various notes about "world affairs." Perhaps most valuable for Houston scholars, her diaries record her conservation work in Maine, as well as the organizations with which she worked at both a national and international (e.g. UNESCO and Conservation Council) and local level (Athenaeum, Franklin Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania).
 
Morris, Ogden, Clemson, and Kenner Families
 
Finally, the Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers also include diaries maintained by William Morris (an 1865 travel diary), Sarah Ogden (a diary dated August 1836), Thomas and Sarah Clemson (two diaries spanning 1854-1855 and 1863), and Josey and Mary Minor Kenner (two diaries with entries spanning 1849-1897). While each of these volumes warrants examination, the Sarah O. (Meredith) Ogden diary might appeal to researchers studying women's history. In a brief "diary" of eight loose manuscript pages dated August 1836, Ogden purports to offer a "mother's detached thoughts and memories, recorded for her children." In execution, Ogden's entries concerning her daughter Gertrude are anything but detached. Traversing both the concrete (such as a tooth extraction) and the abstract (praise for her daughter's imagination, memory, and childlike "intellect"), Ogden's entries are as much a record of her daughter's childhood as they are a window into Ogden's experience as a parent and spiritual guardian.