[Diary with interesting travel content, documenting a trip to New York City and New England.]

New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and other locales,10 August 1859 to ca. 1878. 8vo, three-quarters black leather and dark blue water silk over boards. 114 pp., additional blank pp. Mounted plant specimens on one page in front and another in rear, with names of various friends and family members assigned to each (perhaps as memorials) and inscription reading “gathered in 1859.” Two pages near end of the journal with tipped-in newspaper clippings. The final entry is written in a hand other than Hilda’s. CONDITION: Spine split in two, some pages loose, pages generally clean; no losses to the text.

A middle-class Buffalo woman’s journal primarily documenting a trip to visit family and friends in New York City, Boston, New Hampshire, and then back home.

Hilda Beede Currier Holmes (d. 1884) was the wife of Rev. Daniel Garland Holmes, who preached throughout New York in communities such as Walpole, Fairport, and Buffalo. The couple had one son, lumber merchant Daniel W. Holmes, and also adopted a daughter. As this journal reveals, Hilda (aged about forty-five) was a devout soul; both she and her husband were Baptists. The heart of Holmes’s journal documents a trip to New York City, on to New England, and then back home. Her journal commences on 10 Aug. 1859 on a somber and pensive note with her taking leave of her beloved family and Buffalo home: “This is a lovely morning but my heart is heavy, my spirits low, and my body weak.” Hilda relates she is about to "undertake so long a journey alone." While she is traveling, her husband is away in Hamburg, Germany for a convent meeting. Reflecting on her life fifteen years ago, she notes: “I find myself at that period strong and resolute with an experience of thirty years,” and then turns to recollections of her childhood. “It seems like looking down a deep well whose waters are low, yet by constant gaze I see the reflection of my own childish face.” Passing through Syracuse, Ithaca, Schenectady and Albany en route to New York City, she pauses to remember past events in these parts. “Oh!”—she comments—“how associations cluster around.”

In the city, she stays on 72 East 12th St. 4th Ave. “This is the London of America,” she pens, admitting: “I had but little idea of what New York City was. I think I like to live here well. My wants are all supplied so nicely.” She finds the city deserted by those vacationing in the country. Hilda stays with a Mr. and Mrs. Smith as well as a Mother Smith. She visits P.T. Barnum’s museum (where she sees numerous caged animals, and notes she does “not think the museum is improved” since her last visit to the city), art galleries, cemeteries, an aquarium, and frequently attends mass—often reciting or transcribing various preachings, hymns and songs. Walking on Broadway one evening she notes that British stage actress and theatre manager Laura Keene’s Theatre is presently closed. Some of her more lively entries include such walks down Broadway: “Woods Minstrels are performing this evening a poor old negro at the door standing on one foot with a banjo in his hand; a poor little girl dancing to attract attention.” On a trip to Staten Island she visits a “seaman’s retreat”: an institution for sick sailors which also contains a widow’s home, which she visits (“it is a solemn sight to see these dear old ladies”). In a passage of great empathy and tenderness, she meets and communes with a pious widow and recites various lines of scripture.

On 17 Aug., about a week after she arrives in the city, she leaves for Boston via the vessel Empire to visit her cousins as well as relatives of her husband (she calls her New York sojourn “a good visit”). Returning to Boston via vessel after visiting a cousin, she hears a “native singer on board, a member of the Boston church… He is a good shouting singing brother.” By 24 Aug. she is visiting her sister Lydia in Holderness, New Hampshire. In one entry during her visit there, she expresses her desire to go to the White Mountains, noting that “hundreds of people are going…six hundred people are boarding at Conway.” On 1 Sept. she starts for Yarmouth to visit her sister Esther. On 3 Sept. she notes having received many invitations to visit, but declares she must return home soon and look after her own family. She frequently addresses being absent from her family, and often remarks that “it is almost pain to enjoy pleasure alone.” After the account of her trip, her following journal entries span nearly twenty years. Hilda died in Chicago in 1884. The journal closes with a brief biographical sketch of Hilda (written in a different hand, likely by a member of the family soon after her death).

REFERENCES: Andover Theological Seminary Alumni. Necrology 1902–1903. Boston: Everett Press Co., 1903.