Poetry notebook : manuscript

circa 1820s-1840s

The item is a poetry notebook, dated circa 1820s-1840s, containing original and published vernacular poems with themes of death, loss, and spiritual consolation. The unbound volume probably originated in the Hudson River Valley of New York, based on references in the works. The identity of the notebook's creator is unknown. Poems tell of the deaths of promising youths, separation from family and friends occasioned by marriage or distant travels, the presence of God in nature, and illness. Dates referred to in the poems are not in chronological order, and only a few poems are dated. The last dated poem of April 20, 1843 describes a child's sighting of the Great Comet of that year. Notebook entries are written in ink by one person, probably a woman, with occasional misspellings; some entries are completed in different hands. The names Ann Catharine Hasard (i.e. Ann Catharine Hazard, Quaker educator, died 1830), Ruth Spencer or RS, "D .... Wing," and J. Haight appear as apparently unpublished poets. Quaker connections can be seen in poems by or about John Mott, Job Scott, Mary Peisley, and Hugh Judge, and in an elegy on the death of Mercy E. Read at Nine Partners Boarding School in Dutchess County. Some unattributed works can be traced to contemporary periodicals, hymns, and miscellanies of 18th- and 19th-century British and American poetry. Also found are copied popular American broadside elegies such as "A Tribute to the Memory of Catherine Berrenger."