Below is an article that grew out of a post I wrote on my old blog. It appeared in The Sunday Gazette earlier this year but is not available on their website so I have posted it elsewhere.
I love old diaries, especially those that have a connection with the Mohawk Valley, so I began reading the one I had just bought with great excitement. A farmer near Fort Plain, New York kept it during the year 1917. But my excitement turned to disappointment when I discovered that his most common entry was “Today I spread manure.” On occasion there were different entries, but none were very interesting.
As I read, I hoped to find some reference to World War I, the most horrific war the world had ever seen up until then. 1917 was the year The United States entered the war. Troops from the Second Provisional Regiment of the New York Guard were guarding the locks on the Erie Canal against sabotage, including the one in Fort Plain. Everybody was talking about the war and singing “Over There.” Everybody, except for my Fort Plain farmer. He never mentioned the war once in his diary.
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May 21, 2008 at 7:41 am
[...] looks at a 1917 diary by a Mohawk Valley farmer and wonders why the diarist wrote nothing about World War I, which was [...]