Legacy MattersThere are some fine examples of personal Legacy Archives at the Library of Congress. Pages from Her Story.
Ordinary women writing about their personal lives give us unforgettable snapshots of nine different times in our country's history.
Take this 15 year old Puritan girl
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.
Or Kate Dunlap, a young wife traveling overland to Montana by horse team.
May 15, 1864…The first emigrants saw hard times on account of bad roads, no grass and the great scarsity of hay. In the afternoon we drove on to Lewis, hoping to get hay but could not get any except we would put up bag and baggage at a hotel. We stopped at the Henderson House . I was relieved from cooking, it being the first time I had eaten at a table for two weeks...
May 18th …We arrived at Council Bluffs about 9 o'clock and the boys about 12 o'clock. We cant get across the river for several days. Hundreds of teams are waiting their turn, and frequently fights and confusion ensue. A sad accident happened to day. A little girl was josteled out of the wagon as it drove on to the ferry boat. was run over and killed. They had started from this place; They returned to bury their child.
Or Marianna Costa who organized textile workers, 1933.
...I didn't understand when the girls in the department I was in said, "We're going to go out." The chanting outside of the window, that's my first recollection. There was chanting outside of our work windows, and a big group of people. I guess they initially started by the Wideman plant. . . . and in Riverside you start in one place and you go down [and] you weave in and out. It's all dye plants. So that if you made your run you would call these people out and they would join in that line. And they'd go to the next plant and there was a bigger line. And the line kept getting bigger and bigger. The crowd instead of being one hundred was two hundred. Two hundred would get three hundred. By the time they got to our plant half the street was just a crowd of people. And they'd say, "Come on out. Join us. We're going to strike...
We are all witnesses to history and what we write about lives today can enrich and enlighten readers in the distant future.