The Ancestral Art of Keeping a Journal

Summer Stammely

Like many, I have tried to journal. I’ve tried handwriting diaries, organizing junk journals, and keeping a digital journal. Despite a pretty and expensive notebook, or a perfect font, or a gorgeous pen, journaling has never panned out for me. After a couple weeks all of my attempts end up scrapped or lost. It’s just not a habit I can keep, and I have a great appreciation for everyone who does manage a successful diary.

Not that keeping a diary ever fell out of fashion, but with the recent “aesthetic” phase seen on social media and this general shift toward being more aware of personal time and space, mental health, and meditation, there’s been a rise in journaling. Rebranding it not only as a pastime, a hobby, or a memory book, but as a form of keeping healthy.

Recently I’ve come into a new fascination with diaries, not keeping my own, but reading those of others. A project I’ve taken on is digitally transcribing an old diary for a local museum. It’s handwritten from 1895. And, honestly, it has changed how I look at journaling.

The diary I’m working on is six by four inches, made out of brown cardstock-like paper and bound with cloth. It is not pretty by modern standards, it’s not decorative, and it definitely doesn’t fit into the “aesthetics” that journaling culture rotates around today. Most likely it was handmade, either by the writer or a local craftsman. There’s no maker’s mark that would connect it to a large company or factory like other books from the era. There’s also no name or address. So, unfortunately for us (but maybe intentional on the writer’s part)I do not know who wrote it.

I first opened the diary expecting juicy gossip. A tell-all of small-town New Hampshire in 1895. I was excited. Maybe it would change the way I look at my hometown or have riveting stories about the life of the writer. This is the first entry:

Feb’y 1895

Thursday 7
I went down in the woods
A trip, nice afternoon
I paid Kelley in full 5.00
For work

Not the most exciting, to say the least, but realistic, an average day for a working-class man (I assume the gender of the writer based on historical gender roles and the actions he describes later on) in 1895 in rural New England. He went for a walk in the woods and paid someone five dollars for work that was it. Continuing to February 8th and 9th:

Friday 8
I loafed awful cold
and rough day

Saturday 9
I loafed. cold.
Done chores,
I paid at store
For cheese .26

At this point, I was hoping I’d caught him in a boring week. So I kept going through February and into March. But the contents didn’t change much. He did chores. Went to the mill. Cut logs. Put shoes onto his oxen. Paid some hired hands. It was cold, and it snowed frequently. And on the 23rd of March, it was his birthday.

So far, the most interesting entry comes from March 14th:

Thursday 14
This day I liked to get
Killed. tree fell on me.
I got some shoes on the
Black steers paid griffin .28
Cut a spilling stack

Interesting, but even so, a falling tree is a reasonable hazard for someone working at a lumber mill and cutting down trees. The writer doesn’t mention a family or friends, doesn’t mention where he lived or what he hoped to do with his life. He writes short sentences about what he did that day, who he paid, and what chores he got done.

It is not intricate, because it doesn’t have to be. What is written is what is important to him. He paid Kelley the five dollars he owed, and he writes it so he can remember. He records the days he works at the mill, most likely as a reminder of how many hours he put in so he knew how much he should be paid. The tree falling on him would certainly come in handy months later if he suddenly had unexplained back pain.

Somewhere in reading all these ordinary entries, something shifted for me. I realized that journaling doesn’t have to be profound or beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. It doesn’t need a perfect pen or a curated page. This writer wrote because he needed to remember his life as it was, plain, cold, repetitive, sometimes dangerous, sometimes dull. And maybe that is the point. Maybe journaling isn’t about crafting a narrative but about marking a life as it happens. Through his little notes, his half-sentences, misspelled words, and scribble like handwriting, I’ve started to understand that my own attempts at journaling might have failed because I was always trying to make them something. Pretty, interesting, deep, worth reading. His diary isn’t any of that by modern standards, but it’s honest.

 It exists. That alone gives it value.

So now, when I think about journaling, my journaling, I can feel it changing. I don’t see it as a task anymore but as something that can be simple, even messy. Maybe just a sentence or a list or a note to future-me. Maybe I don’t need the perfect notebook, because he didn’t either. Maybe all I need is the moment I’m willing to write down, nothing more.