About the books
Mary's writings are contained in two hand-bound volumes totaling about 400 legal-size pages, with about 425-450 words per page, written in a regular, though somewhat cramped hand. Although the books are known in the family as "Aunt Polly's diaries," she never used that term. In August 1857 she assembled one volume from paper and pasteboard to transcribe some of her religious expositions, letters, and verses. Succumbing to the writing bug, she began keeping what she called her "Record" of daily events at the beginning of 1858 and continued until the volume was full, 19 September 1863. She then turned to the unused pages of a second volume, which contained her letters to her Father and her Relation of Hope, making her first entry on 21 September 1863. She continued in this volume, writing as the spirit moved her, until the last entry in 1871.110 For the sake of clarity, I have chosen to arrange the letters and other entries in chronological order.
Although the original books remain in the family, photocopies of the complete journals may be seen in the Local History Section of the Kenton County Public Library in Covington, Kentucky, and microfilms may be viewed at the Special Collections department of the Margaret I. King Library of the University of Kentucky in Lexington.111
About the language and style
In Mary's childhood, British and American English were much closer than they are in the late twentieth century. Mary often employs forms such as "amongst" and "whilst" which have vanished from American speech but are still common across the Atlantic. She also uses "blest" and "staid" where we would use "blessed" and "stayed". Similarly, she writes "eat" (pronounced like "ett") where we would now write "ate". An occasional archaism creeps in, I suspect, just for the fun of playing with the language, such as writing "holpen" for the past participle of help. Mary is also fond of the emphatic double negative, a usage eschewed by later generations of schoolmarms, whose genteel logic overwhelmed their grasp of linguistic history.
Mary's style was greatly influenced by her readings in the King James Version of the Bible and by contemporary oratory. The cadences and sonorities of her phrasing, so confusing at first reading, become comprehensible, even natural, when one considers the thousands of hours of extempore sermons she must have heard.
About the editing
Mary was in the first generation to grow up with Noah Webster's famous "Blue Back Speller" which standardized American orthography, so her spelling was excellent, but her punctuation is almost nonexistent. In her disdain for the pedestrian period and the quotidian comma, she may have anticipated the writers of a later time in their discovery of stream-of-consciousness narrative. I have introduced some punctuation for clarity, but I have retained her spelling and capitalization. Modern usage requires that proper nouns be capitalized; Mary rarely does.
Mary sometimes added comments to the manuscript; they are marked with slashes: /thus/. The occasional illegible word, too faint or smudged to read, is indicated by dashes within brackets: [-----]. My editorial insertions, also in brackets [thus], have been confined to supplying a word or two to unravel the sometimes confusing syntax. Mary admonished one of her nieces, "to be careful in writing and not leave out words. You will see what a bad habit I got into when I was young, and it cleaves to me yet."112 So it did, but we must keep in mind that most of Mary's entries were not written with other readers in mind. Where I have omitted entire entries or long passages, the gaps are indicated thus: * * * * *. Shorter omissions are shown by the usual ellipses: . . . .
For readability I have broken long passages into paragraphs suitable for viewing with a Web browser.
Her writings reflect the central place of religion in her life. I have left out some passages which belabor points covered elsewhere or which dwell on theological matters too abstruse to interest those who do not share her dedication to spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs.
To help unravel the often perplexing references to Mary's kin and neighbors, and for the benefit of those modern readers unfamiliar with American social and political history, I have provided explanatory notes, some with cross references. To view the note, click on the footnote number. To return to the text at the point where you left, click on the number of the note (or use the BACK function of your browser).
Mary scatters Biblical quotes and references throughout her letters and journal entries. For readers who lack her familiarity with the Bible, or who have had the misfortune of being raised with only graceless modern translations assembled by committees of supposedly erudite but manifestly tin-eared scholars, I have noted the sources. Mary also sprinkles verses liberally throughout her writings. Most are her original compositions, but sometimes she indicates they are quotations. Although she gives no attribution, she was especially fond of works by Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and John Newton (1725-1807), two British religious writers of earlier times.113
Notes:
[Click on footnote number to return to text.]
110 She seems to have borrowed the second book from her teenaged nephew, James Jerome Bristow, for his name is inscribed with adolescent flair on the first page. At the back of this book are two pages of accounts that Mary kept beginning in 1865. These are included.
111 In 1995 their call numbers were M-380 and M-144. The latter film (which also includes a copy of General Stephens' travel notes from 1855 and 1857) is also available through the LDS Family History Library. Also filmed with the books was a large sheet of genealogical notes from Mary, recorded in January, 1881 by her nephew, Louis Lunsford Bristow.
112 See 26 Mar 1855.
113 Newton is best known as the writer of "Amazing Grace" a haunting tune which gained wide and renewed popularity in the late twentieth century. An excellent source for hymns obscure and popular is The Cyber Hymnal with extensive pages that include audio clips and MIDI files. A dedicated aficionado of nineteenth-century hymnology and verse might find a worthwhile challenge in tracking down the sources of some of Mary's more obscure quotes.
