Guide to the Maria Fuller Diaries, 1869-1934

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.