Book Description

In 1852, Caroline Cowles Richards was ten years old. She, with her younger sister, Anna, and her brothers, James and John, had been living with her grandfather, Thomas Beals (1783-1864), and her grandmother, Abigail Field Beals (1784-1872), since she was seven. Her diary for the next twenty years contains information on growing up in a New York village, memories of family, the approaching Civil War, etc. She wrote little after 1864 and doesn't mention her own wedding. She married a Clarke, probably "Mr. Noah Clarke's brother" mentioned in the diary. Her oldest child was named Abigail Beals Clarke. She includes obitiuaries for her grandparents.