This blog will cover one year in the life of someone living in the Town of Bovina in 1868 – Walter James Coulter. Walter was born in Bovina on February 4, 1843, the son of Walter Coulter (1804-1876) and his first wife, Margaret Storie (1806-1864). Walter J. was one of 12 children, several of whom died in infancy. He spent his childhood and early adulthood in Bovina on his father's farm, located on Seedorf Road. The farm is now owned by Jeff Mills and Jane Pavlovich and is located about a mile from the Coulter ancestral home settled by his grandfather Francis Coulter (1771-1846), one of Bovina's first settlers.
On February 27, 1868, Walter married Jeanette Dumond Wilbur in Lansingville (now Delancey) . They had their first child, John A. Coulter, in February 1869 while living in Bovina. In late winter of 1870, they moved to Hamden to live with Jeanette's parents. That May, their first born child died and was buried in Bovina, but they would have nine more children, all of whom survived to adulthood. William (1870-1949) was born in Hamden. The other eight were all born in Walton: Mary Jane (1873-1958), Emma (1874-1964), George (1877-1938), Elmer (1879-1952), James (1881-1974), Alvin (1884-1943), Anna (1887-1967), and Rena (1888-1959). Walter and Jeanette owned a farm on Oxbow Hollow in Walton for most of their married lives. Walter died on July 16, 1919 at the home of his daughter, Rena Coulter McDonald in Walton. His wife Jeanette died in 1926.
Walter’s granddaughter, Esther Coulter Cash (daughter of Alvin Coulter), donated his diaries to the Delaware County Historical Association. Coulter’s diaries date from 1868 to the year of his death in 1919, with a few gaps.
In the interest of documenting the history of Bovina, I am creating a transcription of his diary from 1868. The transcribing will be on-going during 2014. (Walter also lived in Bovina in 1869 but, unfortunately, that year is missing.)
The entries will be posted each day. Note that these overall are short - though Walter filled each page, the pages are quite small. Much of the diary is rather dry as he notes what chores he was doing and/or what the weather was like, but he does show a dry sense of humor. When he writes about hauling dung, for instance, he notes that it "is not a very pleasent job."
Walter mentions encounters with a number of people, most of them from Bovina. When I can, I will provide information on the people mentioned in the diary. In some instances, I am pretty sure of the identification, in other cases, not so. Some people I could not identify, either because the person simply was unknown or the name was too common to distinguish which one it was. If anyone does have some thoughts, please pass them along. As I continue the work in transcribing and posting the diary, I may update past entries when I have further clues to help with identification. I will be creating a separate entry in this blog which will have an alphabetical listing of the people I have identified. It will be updated frequently as more names appear.
I have kept the spellings as much as possible and have only made corrections in the interest of readability. He tended to write ‘today’ as ‘to day’ and ‘tonight’ as ‘to night.’ He used the decimal as we would use a comma in denoting large numbers (ie 1.000 instead of 1,000 - it is how it is done in Europe today). At the top of each day's entry there is a number. He numbered each page of the diary from the first page. The first 24 pages included a calendar and other information similar to an alamanc. The number for January 1 starts with 25.
Walter some days rounded out the entry with something he may have read in a newspaper or magazine - an interesting fact, poetry or some sayings. Be forewarned - some of these are not politically correct! And a couple of entries will be, to be frank, offensive. But they are what they are and will be included in the transcript.
One of the more intriguing aspects of the diary concerns items within entries written in a code. Sometimes the code is several words, sometimes just a word or two inserted with the English. On January 7, Bovina resident, Samantha Misa, broke the code. See blog entry for January 7 with more information: http://waltercoulterdiary1868.blogspot.com/2014/01/breaking-code.html. In the transcription, the coded sections are denoted with brackets - [ ].
I want to thank the Delaware County Historical Association for allowing me to scan and transcribe Walter Coulter's diary. And my thanks to Esther Cash, who had the foresight to place the diaries where current and future researchers can learn about life in Delaware County in the 1860s.
On February 27, 1868, Walter married Jeanette Dumond Wilbur in Lansingville (now Delancey) . They had their first child, John A. Coulter, in February 1869 while living in Bovina. In late winter of 1870, they moved to Hamden to live with Jeanette's parents. That May, their first born child died and was buried in Bovina, but they would have nine more children, all of whom survived to adulthood. William (1870-1949) was born in Hamden. The other eight were all born in Walton: Mary Jane (1873-1958), Emma (1874-1964), George (1877-1938), Elmer (1879-1952), James (1881-1974), Alvin (1884-1943), Anna (1887-1967), and Rena (1888-1959). Walter and Jeanette owned a farm on Oxbow Hollow in Walton for most of their married lives. Walter died on July 16, 1919 at the home of his daughter, Rena Coulter McDonald in Walton. His wife Jeanette died in 1926.
Walter’s granddaughter, Esther Coulter Cash (daughter of Alvin Coulter), donated his diaries to the Delaware County Historical Association. Coulter’s diaries date from 1868 to the year of his death in 1919, with a few gaps.
In the interest of documenting the history of Bovina, I am creating a transcription of his diary from 1868. The transcribing will be on-going during 2014. (Walter also lived in Bovina in 1869 but, unfortunately, that year is missing.)
The entries will be posted each day. Note that these overall are short - though Walter filled each page, the pages are quite small. Much of the diary is rather dry as he notes what chores he was doing and/or what the weather was like, but he does show a dry sense of humor. When he writes about hauling dung, for instance, he notes that it "is not a very pleasent job."
Walter mentions encounters with a number of people, most of them from Bovina. When I can, I will provide information on the people mentioned in the diary. In some instances, I am pretty sure of the identification, in other cases, not so. Some people I could not identify, either because the person simply was unknown or the name was too common to distinguish which one it was. If anyone does have some thoughts, please pass them along. As I continue the work in transcribing and posting the diary, I may update past entries when I have further clues to help with identification. I will be creating a separate entry in this blog which will have an alphabetical listing of the people I have identified. It will be updated frequently as more names appear.
I have kept the spellings as much as possible and have only made corrections in the interest of readability. He tended to write ‘today’ as ‘to day’ and ‘tonight’ as ‘to night.’ He used the decimal as we would use a comma in denoting large numbers (ie 1.000 instead of 1,000 - it is how it is done in Europe today). At the top of each day's entry there is a number. He numbered each page of the diary from the first page. The first 24 pages included a calendar and other information similar to an alamanc. The number for January 1 starts with 25.
Walter some days rounded out the entry with something he may have read in a newspaper or magazine - an interesting fact, poetry or some sayings. Be forewarned - some of these are not politically correct! And a couple of entries will be, to be frank, offensive. But they are what they are and will be included in the transcript.
One of the more intriguing aspects of the diary concerns items within entries written in a code. Sometimes the code is several words, sometimes just a word or two inserted with the English. On January 7, Bovina resident, Samantha Misa, broke the code. See blog entry for January 7 with more information: http://waltercoulterdiary1868.blogspot.com/2014/01/breaking-code.html. In the transcription, the coded sections are denoted with brackets - [ ].
I want to thank the Delaware County Historical Association for allowing me to scan and transcribe Walter Coulter's diary. And my thanks to Esther Cash, who had the foresight to place the diaries where current and future researchers can learn about life in Delaware County in the 1860s.
