Variety is the Spice of Life

1815 Diary Cover

After visiting the diary of my 5th Great-Grandmother, Sylvia Lewis Tyler (6 Jun 1785 - 18 Dec 1851), in a museum I fell in love with the covers of her diaries. Most of them were plain, but a few of them are covered with colorful wallpapers. My favorite, pictured above, is the cover of Sylvia Lewis Tyler's 1815 diary. She used the front page of a local newspaper, the Spectator, as the cover. Click on any of the pictures to view a larger version.

The majority of the diaries are covered with a simple sheet of paper, like the two examples above.

 

The most interesting, however, are the three pictured above that are covered with wallpaper. The curator believes that they may be the remnants of the wallpaper that Abel and Sylvia Lewis Tyler used to line the inside of the trunks they made. These trunks were made for sale and it is likely that Sylvia used these scraps, when available, to spice up the covers of her diaries.

A few of the covers have been altered by well meaning descendants who have written dates in ink and taped edges. I am happy that they are now in the museum where they have the appropriate staff and means to care for them.

A Visit 200 Years in the Making

Sylvia Lewis Tyler's First Diary

Inside Cover: Sylvia Lewis of Bristol her journal beginning the first of March 1801 in the 16th year of her age to continue

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Five months ago, I was living in Las Vegas and didn't know anything beyond a couple generations on my Tyler family line. In an amazing twist of fate I would find out that my 5th Great-Grandmother, Sylvia Lewis Tyler, had written a diary 200 years ago and that it was in the archives at a national museum in Washington D.C., my new residence.

On a brisk early September day, my husband and I left our DC area apartment and boarded the Metro to downtown. After weeks of moving, scheduling and rescheduling we were finally going to see the diary of my 5th Great-Grandmother, Sylvia Lewis Tyler.

As we arrived outside the museum and my anticipation was killing me. We walked into the administrative entrance of the museum and put on our visitor stickers. The bellman rang the curator and I paced nervously as we waited for her to arrive. The two minutes felt like an eternity! The curator arrived and we hugged. We had been emailing and exchanging documents for the past five months. We had even determined that we were very distantly related, and today, we finally got to meet!

As we got in the elevator to go to the archives, a sense of calm overcame me. We walked into the cold archival room and my eyes immediately focused on two non-descript gray boxes sitting in the middle of a table on the far end of the room. They were the boxes that held Sylvia's Diary. We sat down at the table and the curator opened the first box. She pulled out folder after folder, each containing a single year of the hand-made diary.

When the curator opened the first one, my breath caught. My Sylvia, my dear Sylvia, had sat next to the fire writing in that diary over 200 years ago. It has survived all these years and Sylvia didn't have a clue. I was giddy, and yet, on the verge of tears.

The curator pulled one of her favorite years and began to read to us. I reached for my husband's hand and allowed myself to be transported back to frontier Ohio. Her words were those of a hard working woman. She detailed daily frontier life, the bartering, the chores, the hardships. Sylvia talked about sewing frocks and making her own fur tippets. On and on she read, filling in the diary with the background knowledge she knew. I had read the diary transcripts, but seeing Sylvia's quill strokes and hand-mixed ink brought me to a whole new level of admiration. Towards the end of our time together I asked if I could touch the diaries, thinking it was a long shot, but wanting this amazing opportunity. The curator smiled and said "of course".

I opened one of the folders and stared at the diary laying inside. I honestly wasn't this nervous on my wedding day. I ever-so-lightly brushed two fingers across the cover that simple stated "1808". I felt as if my dear Sylvia was standing over my shoulder telling me to turn the page. I did and a flood of tears poured down my face. With each page I turned they continued to pour. My husband and the curator each placed a gentle hand on my back and said nothing. They knew how much Sylvia meant to me and let me have my time with her.

The emotions I felt were nothing I can truly explain in words. It was as if after all that reading I could feel her joy, suffer her pains. I felt like was there, struggling in frontier Ohio with her. I felt even more connected to her. As if, those fragile diaries survived the last 200 years so that I could touch them for those 30 seconds. So, I could know her story.

Note: For background information on Sylvia Lewis Tyler you can click here (I am related through her son Abel Royce Tyler). If you missed the post on how I found about about the diary's existence you can  read more by clicking here. You can also read about my visit to her grave in Trumbull County, Ohio by clicking here.