BACKGROUND OF DIARY

This diary was written by a 15-year-old Rhode Island girl. Its first entry is dated December 5, 1675, which appears to be her birthday. The rest of the diary covers a two-year period and ends abruptly in November 1677. The diary was found by Adeline Slicer, who published its contents in The New England Magazine in September 1894. Although the actual name of the diarist is unknown, her entries provide an excellent snapshot of Puritan life during the Colonial period.
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December 5, 1675.....I am fifteen years old to-day, and while sitting with my stitchery in my hand, there came a man in all wet with the salt spray, he having just landed by the boat from Sandwich, which had much ado to land by reason of the surf. I myself had been down to the shore and saw the great waves breaking, and the high tide running up as far as the hillocks of dead grass. The man George, an Indian, brings word of much sickness in Boston, and great trouble with the Quakers and Baptists; that many of the children throughout the country be not baptized, and without that religion comes to nothing. My mother hath bid me this day put on a fresh kirtle and wimple, though it be not the Lord's day, and my Aunt Alice coming in did chide me and say that to pay attention to a birthday was putting myself with the world's people. It happens from this that my kirtle and wimple are not longer pleasing to me, and what with this and the bad news from Boston my birthday has ended in sorrow.

The rest of the diary includes entries recounting holiday events, Indian attacks, religious observances and visits to Boston.