How did a fifteen-year-old farm girl in New Hampshire spend her days?  Recently I got an idea by reading Martha (Mattie) Westgate’s Diary, written on her parents’ farm in Cornish, N.H. in 1885.

In Mattie’s case, every day was a chance to visit someone and every winter evening was an opportunity to attend a “sociable” or at least visit with friends and relatives who dropped by the Westgates’ house on Dingleton Hill.  On the evening of Tuesday, January 6, 1885, for example, when the temperature was 6 above zero, “There were 56 people here” at her house talking, singing and playing games.  Mattie surely tickled the ivory keys.

Five days out of seven, Mattie or one of her parents “went to Windsor.”  In Mattie’s case, it was often to visit friends she had met at Windsor High (from which she graduated the year before).  She also spent many days visiting schools where friends of hers taught.  She often visited Grandpa (William Westgate’s father Earle) and Uncle Ed and Aunt Julia Bryant, her mother’s brother and his wife, who all lived nearby.

During the winter Mattie often went to one of several skating rinks in Windsor, although on Saturday, February 28, she “[de]termined never to skate again” after an excursion there with her mother and brother Earle, presumably because she had trouble staying upright.  She returned to the rink a week later and many times thereafter that winter.

Mattie weighed herself twice in 1885, reporting to her Diary that she was 132 1/4 lbs, net weight 126 1/4 lbs (by August she had put on 1/2 lb.) Try to imagine how she measured her net weight, given that she probably weighed herself by putting a penny in a drugstore scale…  

Mattie had two suitors: George (Fairman or Harlow, I’m not sure which) and Elwin Quimby.  George sent her books and letters and gave her oranges.  On May 18, she “had a letter from… George,” who “sent my rings to me.”  The next day she went walking with him.  In the early months of the year, she disguised her boyfriend’s name in her Diary by calling him “Gugeorurguge.” 

Elwin, who was working in a mill in Watertown, Massachusetts that year (along with his twin brother), also sent Mattie letters.  (The Quimby boys returned to Cornish in December.)  On most Sundays, Mattie attended church alone or with her parents, sitting with friends and borrowing from the church’s lending library.  Mattie read at least 15 novels in 1885, including Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa, part of a wildly popular series about a mischievous boy who loved to play pranks on his father for the pleasure of creating mayhem. “Peck’s Bad Boy” was a popular term for any incorrigible rule-breaker. 

Once she turned 16 (on March 8), Mattie regularly “kept school” in District No. 10 in Cornish Flat, which was so far from Dingleton Hill that she had to stay with other families.  Although she never complained in her diary about boarding around, one evening at Mr. Bugbee’s house she was “awful lonesome.” She clearly preferred teaching in District No. 2, which was so close to her house that she didn’t have to board.

When she wasn’t at work (each session was about six weeks long, year-round, with long breaks between sessions) Mattie helped with laundry on Mondays and occasionally washed a floor, raked hay or went berrying with her mother.  In August she and her mother Charlotte picked 11 quarts of raspberries. 

In late September Mattie took a trip to Boston, where she viewed a painting of the Battle of Gettysburg and shopped at Jordan Marsh & Co.  She went to Nantasket Beach… no mention of splashing in the waves.  She also toured Mt. Auburn Cemetery to view the graves of distinguished New Englanders in the dappled shadows of that lovely place.  Back at home, Mattie went to the circus one July day, and attended the theater five days straight, evening and matinee, in November.

Like other diarists of her era, Mattie kept a record of her expenditures at the back, along with the addresses of her pen pals.  On the inside cover of her diary Mattie inscribed two verses.  The first goes like this:

How sad to think if this be so/How few have sisters here below/It matters not;-get if you can/The sister of some other man!

And the second, as I interpret the faded, hasty script, looks like this:

A bubrurotuthasherursus lulovere ‘tutisus susaidud/mumayer fufailch/A mumotuthashherur’sus/susmisilean/gug suronon dudimus anundud/pinpalules./Babutut nunang ughasheret?/onun earurtuthashvuvailulsus tutu?/mumovuve.  Tuthashe/fufonundud…/ofuf a susisustutterterursus luloverso.

What?!! Using Mattie’s code for “George” (Gugeorurguge), I think I see what she is saying. Here is a hint: I think the first line means, “A brother’s love ’tis said may fail.”