Guide to the Maria Fuller Diaries, 1869-1934
Maria Fuller Diaries, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library.
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Maria E. Fowler Fuller was born on May 16, 1847, and grew up in Maine. As a young adult in the years 1869-1870 she took an extended trip to Washington, D.C., and just afer her return she married Henry Lucius Fuller, a druggist in Augusta, Maine. He and his father, Eben Fuller, were business partners and had a store on Arch Row near Water Street. They were relatives of Melville Weston Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Henry and Maria Fuller had twin daughters and a son, all of whom died young. She was an avid church-goer and somewhat sickly in her later years. She died in 1934.
Contains fifty diaries by Maria Fuller covering the years 1869-1870, 1884-1886, 1888, 1890-1921, and 1923-1934. The 1869 and 1870 diaries detail a trip to Washington, D.C., and include a description of her meeting with President and Mrs. Grant, General Sherman and other dignitaries (Mrs. Grant looked "horrid," Fuller writes). She also describes visiting a "colored mission school" while in the city. After 1884, the most common diary entries record the weather and Fuller's social calendar, although she does describe being taken to the local courthouse in 1932 to vote for Herbert Hoover. Almost all of the volumes also include a cash account for the year.
1869
1870
1884
1885
1886
1888
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
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1910
1911
1912
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1914
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1918
1919
1920
1921
1923
1924
1925
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1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934