Written by Jacob Smith, Digitization Coordinator for the Huron County Museum. Photo: Robert Watson diary, pages 8-9.
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The Museum’s digitization collection has grown to include scanned and uploaded eight historical diaries. They were written by Douglas McTavish, Mary Longmore Green, Robert Watson, and Thomas Rowe between the mid-1800s and early 1900s, and detail rural life across Huron County, such as farming activities, the weather, and local news. These historical diaries were chosen for digitization due to their deterioration, as bits of paper on some of the diaries peel off when handled.
Photo: Mary Longmore Green Diary 1, pages 83-84 have clear examples of deterioration.
Out of the eight digitized diaries, three were written by Mary Longmore Green. Mary was born in 1870 to Andrew Green and Mary McHardy Green, and grew up on a farm in Dunlop, Colborne Township. Throughout her three diaries in the Museum’s collection, which were written between 1899 and 1901, she documents her rural Huron County life, visits with friends and family, and her time at school. She discusses her time studying at the Ontario Agricultural College (O.A.C.) in Guelph in the early 1900s, which you can read in Diary 3. In her studies, she focused on dairy: how to make milk, cream, butter, and cheese, and the science behind it. Mary goes into detail about her friends and instructors at the institution, and her travels between Dunlop and Guelph. In later years, she married Robert Dures. Mary passed away in 1946, and is buried in Colborne Township.
Photo: Mary Longmore Green writes about travelling to Guelph to attend school. 2023.70.3, pages 5-6.
Transcriptions of the historical diaries are available upon request. Please contact the Huron County Archives for more information.
This project is funded (in part) in part by the Government of Canada
Ce projet est financé (en partie) par le gouvernement du Canada.