Tom McGrath: "Cold We All at Home..."
Comments: Hope Greenberg
1) What a great topic. The opening clearly establishes the questions
and the sources you will use. You might consider making the
language a bit more direct or emphatic. Ex: The diaries of four
rural Vermonters provide some answers to these questions. . .Each
offers a different (unique?) perspective on the winter activities of .
. .
2) This would be a good place for a secondary source that explains
mid-19th century rural school attendance patterns. Did many farm boys
spend most of winter in school?
3) Another good place for some background information on church
services. Were they all day affairs? One hour in the morning? Large
congregations, small groups? Would not have to be an entire monograph
on the subject! Just a bit of background.
4) Does she mention anything about her students? Age, gender,
activities, etc.?
5) "she does appear to enjoy being there" An other examples of that?
6) Can you draw any conclusions about how he used his diary as a
result? That is, does he see the diary a record of "work" activity but
not leisure activity? If so, he may actually be engaging in some form
of leisure activity but simply not noting it in the diary. . . an
impossible sort of question, I realize but it should probably be
raised.
7) Does he ever mention books/reading? if so, you could bring in the
Gilmore chapter, and if not, you could still bring it in ("despite the
fact that Gilmore found. . .")
8) Here's a great chance to compare the prices he reports with prices
from some other source, perhaps an agricultural newspaper of the same
time period.
9) There's a great place to provide some background information on the
various denominations and people's attitudes towards them. How diverse
were antebellum Vermonters? How tolerant?
10) Do you think this is representative of some of the themes touched
on in class re: Vermont farmers diversification in the face of
competition from the Midwest?
11) Hmmm...some opportunity for community settlement pattern
information. How close are neighbors, do extended families tend to
settle in one area, etc.
12) The peripatetic life of a rural school master. There should be an
article somewhere about that to provide some context.
13) "girls of any consequence" !! cute--but I think he doesn't mean he
expects pleasant consequences as a result of his talk but instead means
the people, or girls, that he spoke with were considered
inconsequential, not worth his time!
A couple general things:
1) Any information about the physical attributes of the diaries? Size,
type of book/paper, number of entries, length of typical entry, etc.
Any indirect information that might provide clues about winter
activities? For example, are their more or longer diary entries in
winter than in summer--were people more able to spend time recording in
their diaries in winter? Does the handwriting/writing style say
anything about the individuals?
2) Rather than order them as a list it might be interesting to organize
them by themes so you can compare/contrast. Some of the themes might be:
a) weather and their reactions to it--how they differ, how they are the
same, how it effects them, For example, the farmer spends a lot of time
talking about the weather. Why might that be?
b) church attendance and attitudes related to it
c) social activities or lack thereof
This might give you the opportunity to draw in the background
information to provide general context as well as tie them together. It
also might make it easier to write the conclusion paragraph.
Some possible secondary sources:
MacDonald, Cameron Lynne and Karen V. Hansen. "Sociability and Gendered
Spheres: Visiting Patterns in Nineteenth-Century New England." Social Science History 25.4 (2001)
pp. 535-561
Project Muse:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/social_science_history/v025/25.4macdonald.html
Gileson, John S. "The Rise and the Decline of the Puritan Sunday in
Providence, Rhode Island, 1810-1926" may have something useful to add
re: attitudes towards church attendance. (JSTOR:
http://www.jstor.org/view/00284866/ap020236/02a00040/0?currentResult=00284866%2bap020236%2b02a00040%2b1%2cD4D501&searchUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fsearch%2FResults%3Fhp%3D25%26si%3D1%26Query%3Dnineteenth-century%2B%2522New%2BEngland%2522%2B%2522church%2Battendance%2522%26mo%3Dbs
McCarthy, Molly "A Pocketful of Days: Pocket Diaries and Daily Record
Keeping among Nineteenth-Century New England Women"
JSTOR:
http://www.jstor.org/view/00284866/ap020293/02a00050/1?searchUrl=http%3a//www.jstor.org/search/Results%3fhp%3d25%26si%3d1%26Query%3dnineteenth-century%2b%2522New%2bEngland%2522%2bweather%26mo%3dbs&frame=noframe¤tResult=00284866%2bap020293%2b02a00050%2b0%2cFFFBAA&userID=84c65c35@uvm.edu/01cc9933411c0421036570169d&dpi=3&config=jstor
(To see how someone else has extrapolated from the limited entries
diarists provide)
Hansen, Karen V. A Very Social Time:
Crafting Community in Antebellum New England. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. UVM has this but I see
it is checked out--Dona may have a copy.
All in all an interesting topic and some great quotes--left me wanting
more!