[Diary of a young woman’s voyage from East Machias, Maine to Washington Territory, at the start of the west coast lumbering boom.]

Aboard the Toando, 17 Nov. 1858–13 Feb., 1959. 8vo (7.25” x 6.5”). 54 pp. in ink (approx. 1100 words), spanning days 56 to 143 of the voyage; first and last sections are missing, as are covers.

An engaging diary kept by a young woman from an important Maine lumbering family as she sails around Cape Horn to reach what is fast becoming one of the most important lumbering towns on the west coast.

Recording her voyage from East Machias, Maine, around Cape Horn to the growing lumber company town of Teekalet (later known as Port Gamble) in Washington Territory, this journal by seventeen year old Emily Talbot Keller offers a window into both her personal experience and the domestic background of the U.S. lumber industry as it expanded from the east to the west coast in the latter half of the 19th Century. The 160 ton schooner Toando sailed six months—from September 23, 1858 to March 28, 1859—to unite family and business associates of the Puget Mill Company. The journal offered here is partial, spanning mid-November to mid-February. At the time of Emily’s voyage, the company consisted of the partnership of four East Machias men: Josiah Keller and Charles Foster—the owners and likely builders of the Toando—Andrew Pope, and William Talbot, the future “lumber kings of the Pacific Coast” (worldforestry).

Emily, whose middle and last names attest to family connections at the backbone of this lumbering enterprise, records everyday life aboard the Toando among her fellow passengers. Besides a small crew, she is accompanied by her own family—father Captain Goddard D. Keller, Sr., his wife Betsey, and several siblings—and the family of her brother, Captain Albert W. Keller—his wife Laura and brother-in-law Josiah Munson, whom Emily will marry shortly after landing in Washington Territory. A. W. Keller captained several more vessels for the Puget Mill Company after this voyage, and went on to a storied sailing career. Emily addresses the diary to her friend Carrie (Cad) Harmon back home. In spite of frequent headaches and nearly relentless tedium (“Oh dear what’s the use for me to write, there’s nothing new”), she writes engagingly about baking, candy making, knitting, and sewing (“I finished my embroidery to-day and I’m not at all sorry”); the weather and long daylight hours as they approach Cape Horn (on deck it’s “cold enough to shave the hairs off of a dog,” but inside she reads “passed nine o’clock without a lamp”); sightings of wildlife (most notably whales and albatrosses) and other vessels; her fellow travelers (“Bub’s as fat as hog, he’s a real squirrel chops, and so is Tom P.”); and all desperately-needed variations to routine. In early December, for instance, she and Laura sneak into the kitchen for a midnight snack of hard bread and pickles—“any one would of thought we were starving if they’d happened in but it was rather late for collars”—and at Christmas she writes: “I got a present (I dare not tell you what) from Josiah, but the best present we received was a fair wind.”

As the Toando rounds Cape Horn, Emily records increasingly rough seas. On January 3rd she writes: “To day we’ve had a strong gale from the W.S.W. and a tremendrous rough sea. I have to cling to the table with all of my might. […] I never want to hear tell of Cape Horn again. Never!” On the 10th she describes a frightening and dangerous “hurricane”:

I never want to experience another such a gale. Father and Albert say they never knew the wind to blow so hard before, and I guess they never wish to again. Such rolling and pitching I never would believed a vessel could live through, I thought sometimes she would roll over and I hardly know what hindered her, for my part. There was one great big sea came over her and covered the house and quarterdeck all over. I cannot discribe it any other way than to say that it was like lifting up a two story house and letting it fall on us. I cannot imagine how the men hung to her at all as I hadn’t the least doubt but what some of them would be lost. Poor Tom P. came awful near it, there was a great big ugly looking sea, struck him and knocked him over the wheel and Father caught him by the legs jest as he was going over…

On January 21st she finally reports: “I suppose I can say tonight that we are around that doleful ‘Cape Horn.’ It’s called getting around to go from the parallel of 50 one side of Patagonia to the parallel of 50 the other side. […] We have been 34 days from 50° South on one side of Paganonia to 50° the other.”

The diary also includes several short poems of Emily’s composition (“To Friends at Home,” “Lines to Carrie,” and “An Acrostic of Carrie”) and “An Acrostic” of Emily’s name, composed by Josiah Munson, as well as two of Emily’s drawings: color depictions of a passing ship’s flags (“we could not understand them, in the margin I have drawn representations of the shape and collar of them, thinking perhaps I may meet with an oppertunity to asertain there meaning”) and a half-page color illustration titled “Toando in a Storm.” After many expressions of impatience (even though “all the grumbling in the world will not help us to Oregon”)—and a month and a half after this extant portion of the journal leaves off—the Toando arrived in Port Townsend, Washington Territory, on March 29th, 1859, having made no stops since leaving port in Boston. Emily and Josiah were married on April 5th and lived out their lives in Washington Territory and California.

The Puget Mill Company evolved from an 1849 San Francisco based lighterage and lumber-sales endeavor headed by Pope, Keller, Talbot’s brother Frederic, and another East Machias man who was soon bought out. Operating as “Pope and Talbot,” that company sought to meet the expanding timber needs of the Gold Rush by selling east coast lumber. By 1853, Pope, Talbot, Foster, and William Keller had established an active mill at Port Gamble—rather than ship lumber from Maine, which was expensive and limiting—and the Puget Mill Company grew quickly thanks to an abundance of Washington timber and skilled laborers from East Machias. The family connection that Emily embodied was a cornerstone of the Mill’s business model: by borrowing only from relations, it had the financial flexibility to become “more adventurous and more successful than other companies” (archiveswest). In spite of a few changes in ownership, the Port Gamble mill became the longest continually operating sawmill in the U.S.—from 1853 to 1995—and is now a National Historic Site.

REPRESENTATIVE PASSAGES:

24 Nov., 1858: “Saw some birds called the Albatross’s. Sewing has been our chief occupations so far today. Laura and I have been figuring this afternoon to see how much our clothes has cost for the last two years. Laura’s came $134.36 cts mine was $76.97 cts, some difference. I cannot write any more tonight, for its so rough Josiah has had to hold me up while I’ve been writing this.”

3 Dec., 1858: “Jim Thompson and Albert cought six albatross’s three white ones and three brown. Laura mother and I have got the white ones skined and stuffed. Laura’s measured 11 feet from wing to wing. Mother’s 10, mine 12, they were horrid great creatures. They were larger than Helen. We are going to put some black beads in there head’s for eyes. Jim G is going to keep his alive as long as he can, there were one that reminded me of Mary Ennis very much. We coaxed them not to kill it so they let it go. Pity they hadn’t all looked like her, or some other good girl.”

13 Dec., 1858: “Today the winds been south all day and blowed a gail and a tremenderous rough sea. The weather's awful disagreeable rainy and snowy and cold. But I suppose we shall see worse than this before we weather Cape Horn. […] I had a bad head-ache all day dear me ‘who would sell a farm and go to sea’ I can truely say, it would not be me, especially if it were to sail around Cape H—but here I am, and am likely to be for at least three months so must bear it as patiently as possible. I’ve been knitting all day. I feel ugly, lazy, sick, and tired, so I’ll go to bed. Good night.”

31 Dec., 1858: “Dear me, it’s one hundred days since we left Boston and we’re not half way to Oregon […] Cad how would you like to be here with us? if you were here we would not be so lonesome. I hope you’ll get a sailor for a husbern, and he’ll make you go to sea all of the time. Please excuse. I almost forgot to say that we are on the broad Pacific Ocean.”

1 Jan., 1859: “About a half an hour ago we made the Island called Diego Ramirez. We cannot see it very plain, for it’s twenty four miles off, its nothing but mountains.” […] I’ll address a few lines to Cad: ‘I wish you a happy new year’ and oh if wishes of mine could make them so […] But Cad we are separated now, broad Oceans roll between us and my influence towards your happiness though never very great must now be less. […] I’d give a good deal to know what you are a doing, and what’s a going on in that cherished village of East Machias.”

12 Jan., 1859: “We have not got wood enough to last a week longer, we shall be forced to burn coal (‘A cold fire, is it?’) all of the time […] but it burns the stove out awful bad. Shall not have any stove long if we do not call somewhere for wood. And I dont know as we shall ever get along further, we are only twenty miles from where we were last Sunday. Since the first of January we have made three hundred and twenty miles and that not on our course. ‘Well done good and faithful Toando.’ I think we’ve got a smart and faithful vessel.”

11 Feb., 1859: “Saw two whales & a tropic bird […] dear me I wish we could have a breeze of wind so that we could get along—for I’m sick of the sea. I’de like to get a shore and have a good run.”

REFERENCES: “Captain William Talbot establishes a steam sawmill at Port Gamble in July 1853,” historylink.org; Coman, Edwin Jr. and Helen Gibbs, Time, Tide and Timer: A Century of Pope and Talbot (Stanford, CA, 1949); “Josiah Keller-Founder of Port Gamble, WA,” kellerfamilyhistory.weebly.com; “William Chaloner Talbot, 1816–1881,” worldforestry.org; “Pope & Talbot records, circa 1849-1975,” archiveswest.org.

CONDITION: Pages worn and broken at edges, though with only little loss to text. Ink sometimes faded but consistently legible.