Soul Searching: Ten Diaries From Otisfield, Maine

By Jean F. Hankins, Ph.D., Otisfield Historical Society. Presented at the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, Deerfield, Massachusetts, June 17, 2006.

Recently, historians in the small Maine town of Otisfield assembled a virtual collection of ten diaries kept by eleven town residents. (See Table 1.) Because the diaries include a long span of town history, from 1814 to 1946, they presented an unusual opportunity to delve into one aspect of local history which is ordinarily difficult to approach-religion.

This essay uses the Otisfield diaries to examine the role of religion in the community. While the ten diaries made it possible to measure religious behavior, that is, such activities as prayer, church attendance, and Bible reading, it remained far more difficult to assess individuals' spiritual feelings and religious beliefs. The ten diaries not only led to a reexamination of old assumptions but also indicated some new approaches. In particular they led to the conclusion that in rural Maine during most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Protestantism and civil life were woven together. After a brief look at all ten diaries, this essay turns to three topics concerning religion's place in the rural community: camp meetings, the public observance of two holidays, and the tradition of ministerial donations.

Reading the diaries

Although there are no rules governing what one writes in a diary, each diary tends to take on a regular, consistent format and content, a life of its own. The ten Otisfield diaries, reflecting this independent spirit, fall into four common types. The spiritual record, as exemplified by the diaries of Josiah Merrill and Albert Kemp, is an account of the individual's quest for salvation. The more common activity record descends directly from the common daybook, as with the diaries of Nathaniel Lamb, the Knight sisters (Estelle Knight and Hester Hill), and Ernest Greenleaf. The life record contains fuller, more reflective entries, demonstrated by the short diaries of Martha Ellen Andrews and Alice Smith, and, more significantly, by the longer diaries of Dr. Horatio Barrows and Mary Pride Knight Brackett. The fourth category, the situational diary, includes those written in response to some situation that produces a dislocation in the diarist's life. The diary of Guy Tucker provides such an example.¹ The Tucker diary, a kind of survival account of three winters spent mostly snowbound on the edge of Thompson Lake, provided interesting details of cutting ice and shoveling snow but proved irrelevant to the present study.

The remaining nine diaries in this study contain copious details about the town's Congregational, Methodist, and Free Will Baptist churches, of which only the Baptist now exists.² Alice Smith's brief 1935 diary was an unexpected bonus: It gives the only evidence to date of the brief tenure of an Advent Christian Church in South Otisfield. An unsigned note stuck between the pages states that she was the daughter of Leonard Smith, Advent minister. This helps explain why the writer, who seems to be about 18, begins each day with "Observed my morning watch" and ends it with "Talked to God and went to bed."

The three activity record diaries kept by Nathaniel Lamb, the Knight sisters, and Ernest Greenleaf provide information only about religious behavior, not religious beliefs. The daily entries are short and repetitive. The language is spare, with few adjectives or adverbs, except when describing the weather. All the writers make coded references to individuals and events that a modern reader has trouble deciphering. The writers seldom express emotions or opinions and withhold judgment on ministers, sermons, and everything else. And they certainly do not delve into their own inner beliefs and fears. Here, chronologically arranged, are samples from activity records left by Nathaniel Lamb, the Knight sisters, and Ernest Greenleaf, all written on a Sunday. First, from Nathaniel Lamb, who always noted the few times he attended church: "April 1, 1888. Sunday. Nice warm and pleasant all day, no wind, thawed all day, horses slumped some in the road. Sib [his wife] and I went to church today it being Easter Sunday. The children had a concert after meeting. After church Sib and I went over to Cys and spent the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Mallon is down from Boston. Is stopping at S. L. Knights. Ellis called this afternoon." Next, Estelle Knight's brief entry for August 17, 1899: "Went to meeting a little while P.M. Sib called. W. W. Carver of Canton preached the afternoon sermon. " In 1922 Ernest Greenleaf, who was not a church goer, wrote this on Sunday, June 4: "Took folks to Bert Kemp's funeral. Then Marge [his wife] & I went down to her folks. Took Hartley & family to train." These entries, all of which refer, somewhat obliquely, to the Free Will Baptist Church in East Otisfield, reveal a few facts, such as the name of the presiding minister and sometimes the text of his sermon. They also indicate that funerals were sometimes held on Sunday and that Sunday was a special day still reserved, if not for church, then for visiting friends and relatives. Put simply, on Sundays the citizens usually did not churn butter or cut hay.

When one reads the many pages in all the diaries, some less obvious trends, unstated in the diaries, become clear. First, it was hard for the two main church societies, Congregational and Baptist, to support their clergy at a time when the town's population was dropping.³ Turnover of ministers was frequent and occasionally the pulpits were vacant. Second, at least for the period from 1888 to 1922, the denomination of the church seems to have been less important than its location. Nathaniel Lamb lived two miles from the Baptist Church but four from the Congregational Church, then located in the village of Spurrs Corner. The Knight-Hill family lived within walking distance of the Baptist Church. Although the diaries show that members of one Otisfield church occasionally attended services in the other, they do not reveal, as other sources do, sporadic efforts to unite the two congregations.⁴ Another, more tentative conclusion, is that church attendance was representational. Nearly all the families to which these diarists belonged were large and multi-generational, including parents, grandparents, children, and unmarried siblings, not to mention hired hands and assorted young female household helpers. Yet none of the activity record diaries shows more than one or two of the family attending church together regularly. This pattern was particularly obvious in the Knight sisters' diary, which shows Estelle Knight alone attending church consistently for a number of years. For the two years of 1895 and 1896, her niece Annie Hill goes with her. Then Estelle attends alone, occasionally with adopted son Bertie. After Estelle drops out, presumably because of the ill health which led to her death in 1902, the diary, now recorded by Estelle's sister Hester, shows Hester's daughter Annie and husband Horatio attending regularly. Finally Horatio goes alone. It seems that during this period when church attendance was an important measure of social respectability, one or two individuals could represent the entire family, thus ensuring the family's good community standing. The diaries record no disapproval of those family members, like Hester and her brother George, who never attended at all.

Spiritual diaries

These three Otisfield activity records, then, reveal facts and figures about church attendance, names of ministers, and frequency of meetings but yield nothing at all about religious feelings and beliefs. The spiritual diaries of Josiah Merrill and Albert Kemp, one a Congregational minister and the other a Baptist layman, fill this void. Both men kept a diary for the sole purpose of recording their intellectual and spiritual journeys toward salvation. The hundreds of pages Merrill wrote include an outline of each of his sermons but none of the names of his nine children. His early diary prose reveals a strong Calvinistic tendency toward self-doubt. He writes, for instance, on May 16, 1814, " I have reason to complain of much hardness of heart & blindness of mind. O when will my heart cease to wander from thee, O G[od] of grace. O for sanctification! O L[ord] let not my inequity have dominion over me." At one point Merrill scolded a local group for holding an impromptu ox pulling contest, which he calls "a foolish abuse of dumb beasts and time spent- about 2 full months of working time in one half day" (March 6, 1822). One can also reconstruct Merrill's theological beliefs from his frequent fulminations against those people he knows have chosen the wrong path to heaven, that is, the Free Will Baptists, the Methodists, the Quakers, and the Shakers. Of the latter, some of whom settled in nearby New Gloucester, he expresses his regret "that so much neatness[,] so much care for convenience & for a fair exterior" is not "directed to the support of the true doctrines of the Church... " (Sept. 9, 1823).

Albert Kemp's spiritual diary, written nearly fifty years later, has much shorter entries in which he faithfully records each Baptist meeting during what was called a protracted revival. In the month of November, 1868, he mentions services on 23 different days, held variously at district schoolhouses, in private homes, or at the church. In December meetings were held on 22 days. For Kemp these months were a spiritually difficult period. Kemp lacks the Reverend Merrill's formal language but speaks in simple, often powerful phrases. On November 8, 1868, for example, he writes, "Went and carried wife out to meeting and returned again and then went with her in the evening, got in quite a rage and came home feeling very angry but felt condemned." On December 20, however, he writes this: "Wife and I both went to meeting. Elder H. prayed and Elder Johnson preached from Nehemiah 6 chap. and 3 verse, and then gave them his views about baptism, did not have but one meeting, and then repaired to the water. It snowed quite fast. Elder Johnson baptized wife and myself and we received a great blessing."

The three remaining diaries, those of Horatio Barrows, Mary Pride Knight Brackett, and Martha Andrews, are life diaries in which the writer discloses both objective facts and personal opinions. The last written, Mattie Andrews', fits here a little uneasily. Only one year of the diary exists, 1862-63, when she was sixteen. At times more of an activity record, her diary focuses mainly on the comings and goings of a busy extended family whose members attended the Congregational Church only occasionally. But unlike the other activity records discussed, Mattie's diary delights in revealing family secrets, some of which seem cryptic: "Cyrus gone to his Fathers to kill a hog. Very pleasant[.] Daut very nauty, called her mother old Sally Edwards. Deck and Daut fighting as usual. Deck afraid to empty paper rags" (Dec. 18, 1862).⁵ Although Mattie's diary shows the pattern of representational church attendance noted earlier and also supplies entertaining anecdotes, it adds little substance to our ongoing religious history survey.

Camp meetings and courtship

Far more useful are the diaries of Mary Pride Knight Brackett and Dr. Horatio A. Barrows. Together they provide a theme for our study: the blending of religious and civic culture. Mary and Dr. Barrows, born two years apart, both lived in the center of town, on Bell Hill, within walking distance of the Congregational Church. Dr. Barrows, the town physician, was a devout, lifelong churchgoer; Mary was not. Their geographic proximity but intellectual, social, and personal differences resulted in their describing the same event from two contrasting viewpoints, thus providing a fuller picture of community events that are sometimes not what they seem.

Both write, for example, about the protracted camp meetings popular in the area before the Civil War. Usually held in September, a camp meeting brings to mind images of crowded tents, haranguing preachers, and anxious souls -- in short, an intensely religious activity. The diaries suggest otherwise. Dr. Barrows, the exemplary church attender, did not go but wrote this: "Thursday Sept. 8, 1842. Great day for going to Camp meeting. The young people from this quarter pretty generally go to day. Among the rest Mr. Ebenr. Wardwell & Miss Sarah Bearce, Mr. David Scribner & Miss Emeline Patch (!), Mr. Benj. Patch & Miss Harriet Elizabeth Knight, Mr. Francis Reed & Miss Hannah Glover. The camp meeting is held in the woods near Welchville in Oxford. Elder Streeter Presiding Elder. Mr. Wardwell informs me to night that there was an immense concourse upon the ground to day."

Dr. Barrows' insinuation that the camp meeting was a courtship opportunity is borne out by Otisfield's vital records, which show that each of the four couples Barrows listed eventually married. Mary's breathless description of a camp meeting she attended five years earlier confirms the fact that for Otisfield, at least, camp meetings served an important social role. Her narrative reveals a young woman in a state of romantic, not religious rapture:

September the 14 [1837], it is a very fine morning but rather cool but I feel on hand for camp meting I am a goin with FB [Frederick Brackett]. Now we are redy I am dressed in white and he is in blew a good hors and chaise to go in we rode over plains and valey and on the whales back through woods and ricks... till we come near the meting and the[n] they were a goin to the meeting in high stile we went to the tavern and put the horse up and then we went down to the ground where they were O how strange it did look to me to see the tents there it made me think of the Arabs and then to look into the tents and see the straw o how boggy it did look I could not stay there I [k]now O how dirty and nasty it was all around the group there was 17 tents and 12 ministers they preached well and sung beautiful but they had a prar meting a noon a[nd] what a noise they did make it was confusion there were a grate many there but I never saw so many hombley faces in my life... I had a very agreeable time ...⁶

The information about courtship here gained from one observer and one participant gives new meaning to a single entry in Mattie Andrews' diary for September 4, 1862, "Dave [Stone] gone to camp meeting." Although this may be only a coincidence, it was not surprising to find that the Otisfield vital records show marriage intentions between David Stone and Leora Batchelder filed on September 9, 1862, five days after the camp meeting.

Holidays and community life

So it seems that the camp meetings, with their promise of instant salvation, also filled a social function. The Otisfield diaries, especially the life accounts, provide new insights into a second topic related to religion: holidays. They indicate that the town's Protestant churches gave little if any liturgical recognition to Easter and Christmas. In fact, Easter is mentioned only twice in the ten diaries, first in 1888 when Nathaniel Lamb and his wife go to church, and then in 1891, when Mary Brackett receives an Easter present. The diaries do refer several times to Christmas, specifically to gift exchange and community trees, but in Otisfield, Christmas clearly was neither the family nor the church celebration of today. On December 25, 1862, for instance, Mattie Andrews' full entry reads, "Cyrus and Hester went to store." On Christmas Day in 1912, Hester (Knight) Hill writes: "Pleasant. George round the house. Horatio & Henry in the woods. Bert called at Maurice Kemp's in the forenoon and hauled wood in P.M."

In Otisfield, at least, the 4th of July and Fast Day were holidays that truly deserved to be called religious. The Independence Day ceremonies held on Bell Hill at the Congregational meetinghouse and the town common were obviously modeled after the community's usual Sundays with their morning and afternoon services. On July 4 it was customary for the Congregational minister to deliver the morning address. The Rev. Josiah Merrill's speech, given on July 4, 1826, fused Christian morality with patriotic fervor. Speaking on this fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Merrill concentrated on the incongruous presence in America of liberty for the white man and slavery for the black. For this Otisfield clergyman there was no moral separation between church and state. To the assembled citizens he proclaimed, “Christ would say, ‘The year of Jubillee is come; go ye Slaves free.’”⁷

Mary Brackett's and Dr. Barrows' descriptions of July 4 celebrations in 1838 and 1840 also depict a holiday that is both secular and sacred. First, in 1838, Mary floats us through the day's events:

"Now the music is tuning up and the folks are a goin to and fro - we have got thre come Margaret Mary and Fredrick & how pleasent it is now we have started for the meting house and the folk are just started from the school house to march... & how pretty they did look(.] Mr Goo! [Gould] gave the address to the sabbath school now it is noon & how thick the folk stir there is a grate many hear o how beautiful they are dressed in all collars... now it is done and Mr Tuner addressed the temperance sosity in the after noon we had a very good time... "

Next, Dr. Barrows' sober assessment made in 1840:

"[I] found an immense collection on the Hill more than M.H. pews would seat & nearly enough to fill the aisles. Mr. Clark's Sabbath School address A.M. is spoken of as an extraordinary performance, giving most perfect & universal satisfaction. Mr. Morris Blake's Temp. Oration P.M. was very well written... on the whole the exercises of the day passed off most felicitously & seemed admirably adapted to the occasion."

What strikes the modern reader, of course, is the prominence in both eyewitness accounts of religious trappings--ministers, meetinghouse, Sabbath School students, temperance society. Altogether absent are the fireworks, brass bands, sirens, costume parades, and food vendors so much a part of today's small town Independence Day celebrations. Not long after 1840, however, the distance between church and town in Otisfield began to widen, and the secular tone of the holiday began to prevail. In 1845, according to Mary's diary, Otisfield staged a picnic in the woods with tables set for 700, and in 1866 she reports a day that featured games and [fire]crackers, a picnic and a swing. Hester Hill's diary suggests that by July 4, 1915, the religious side of the holiday was gone altogether: "Bert and Horatio went down to Pug[leyville] to see the fire rockets go up, had a good time. " Likewise, exactly twenty years later, Alice Smith and two friends spent their holiday swimming and watching fireworks.

The other Otisfield holiday that blended civic and religious elements was Fast Day. Beginning in 1670, the governors of Massachusetts and then New Hampshire and Maine issued annual proclamations establishing this holiday, usually on a Thursday in April. Its origins are somewhat obscure, but apparently its purpose was to seek God's blessings on the new planting season. On Fast Day, unlike Christmas, Otisfield citizens abstained from their ordinary secular pursuits and, in theory, observed the day by fasting, praying, and attending church.⁸

Few people today are aware that such a holiday as Fast Day ever existed. The first Otisfield diarist to mention it was the Rev. Josiah Merrill, writing on April 6, 1820. He wrote: " Public fast in the New State of Maine." This partially prepares one for Dr. Barrows' statement on Thursday, April 9, 1839: "Fast Day. 11 years ago in Gov. Lincoln's day Fast Day came on the 9th •.. A full meeting here today. Mr. R[ichardson] preached... P.M. the order of exercises were like Protracted meetings exhortations, singing & prayers from all hands." In 1907 Maine, following the earlier example of Massachusetts, abolished Fast Day, replacing it with Patriots Day, a celebration which has been synonymous for many years with the running of the Boston Marathon and which has no religious connotation whatsoever.

A diary entry Dr. Barrows made in 1842 suggests that even in his lifetime the day was not universally observed. On the Fast Day that occurred that year on Thursday, April 7, Barrows and his family spent the day in church, but the next day he wrote, "Zach Winship came yesterday morning [to saw and split wood] but went home again after I told him it was Fast day." Mary Brackett's long diary records six Fast Days between 1837 and 1879 but gives no details. Hester Hill mentions it only once, on April 19, 1894, when she also notes she made soap.

Supporting the ministers

The custom of ministerial donations, like camp meetings, first strikes us as solely a religious matter. Like Fast Day, it is an unfamiliar topic, and to date no published sources have surfaced that throw much light on it. The ministerial donation was the community custom of making periodic gifts of money, meat, firewood, produce, clothing, and other necessities to clergymen whose congregations may or may not also have contracted to pay them a fixed salary. Here again several diaries, used together, strongly suggest that supporting the ministers in the community was as much a civic as a church responsibility. Although they do not make clear how frequently these ministerial donations were made, the dates of the diary entries suggest that it was a beginning-of-year practice.

Dr. Barrows’ diary for January 1, 1844, gives us the fullest explanation of how it worked. Evidently he himself started the process with a public appeal. What is particularly interesting is that his appeal was for donations to all three churches in town-Congregational, Baptist, and Methodist. The first, "A Donation visit for [Baptist] Elder Stephen Hutchinson at Bolster's mills," he describes most fully. "Before noon the grounds in the rear of Elder Hutchinson's house & barn were well covered with horses & sleys... [bringing] various kinds of grain, flour, meat, butter cheese... his wallet replenished with money, his wardrobe with cloth... [and] a great Thanksgiving dinner." After the meal, he tells us, Mr. Richardson, the Congregational minister, led a hymn and offered prayer. Elder Hutchinson followed with a sermon.⁹ (Hankins, Free Baptist Church, p. 17).

Ten days later the townspeople turned out for a second ministerial donation, this one for the Reverend James Richardson, the Congregational minister. Oddly enough, Dr. Barrows, though a member of Richardson's church, merely mentions this one. Fortunately, Mary Brackett gives more details: "[January 11, 1844].... mother has gone over to Mr. Richardson to the donation o what a time every body a most went but me the spiret did not move I gess that there was over a hundred there it was a grate donation and the people gave Mr Hucherson a grate one the other day[.]" Nor was this all. Three days later Dr. Barrows writes. "Jan. 14. Donation day at Mr. Milliken's. 130-140 people there. The bulk of the meeting were Methodists, but there was quite a sprinkling of Free will Baptists & Congregational and one Calvinist Baptist."

The ministerial donation was a custom that continued for some time. On December 24, 1868, Albert Kemp mentions a similar event held to benefit Elder Hutchinson, in which "he got 75 dollars worth." And Nathaniel Lamb paid his due on New Year's Day in 1897 when he "Went out to the minister's this afternoon and carried him a ham and spareribs." What surprises the modern observer about the ministerial donation is the willingness, even eagerness, of the townspeople to support all three clergymen, regardless of denomination. The closest modern equivalent in rural Maine now may be the benefit supper to aid victims of fire or other disasters. Sometimes held in fire stations, sometimes in churches, these generally elicit a wide public response motivated by dual feelings of morality and civic responsibility.

What the diaries reveal

When the diaries have been studied and the soul searching done, the picture of religion in Otisfield remains incomplete. The diaries do not suggest, for example, why the Congregationalists in 1881 moved from Bell Hill to the village of Spurrs Corner, or why the Methodists simply disappeared. And for the long period after 1924, when the Knight sisters' diary ends, there is little information at all, except for a few facts about the short-lived Adventist church.

Like all diaries, these ten from Otisfield have not so much proved our assumptions as they have piqued our curiosity, posed questions, and raised awareness. The spiritual diaries enrich our historical landscape by informing us of the theological inclinations of two individuals living at different times. The activity record diaries with their catalogs of facts give us not just some missing names and dates but some new patterns of religious behavior, especially regarding church attendance. The life record diaries, with their frank descriptions and comments on town affairs, lead us to a better understanding of that town and its people. In particular they provide evidence that the institution of camp meetings served both a social and religious purpose, that July 4 and Fast Days were simultaneously religious and civic holidays, and that ministerial donations were a way for the entire town to support its spiritual leaders. Finally, the ten diaries from Otisfield document well the long, complex alliance of the religious and the secular in community life.

The ten diaries

Table 1 from the original essay. Dates, ages, and ownership are reproduced as recorded in the 2006 presentation; ownership is not a current directory.

Original paper

Download Soul Searching: Ten Diaries from Otisfield, Maine (PDF). The essay is reproduced here with its table and nine notes; headings have been added for navigation. Statements about present-day churches and diary ownership reflect the paper’s 2006 date.

Notes and sources

1. Three of these categories (spiritual, life record, and situational) were identified by Stephen E. Kagle, Early Nineteenth-Century American Diary Literature (Boston: Twayne, 1986), p. 64. ↩

2. There is some evidence also of a Universalist society existing around 1800. The Methodists, who in 1828 built and shared a building with the Free Will Baptists, disappeared by 1860 (William Spurr, A History of Otisfield, Maine [The Author, 1950?] pp. 106–111). In 1950 the Congregationalists meeting in the Otisfield village of Spurrs Corner changed affiliation and are now designated the Spurrs Corner Church of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (communicated by church member Polly Bartow to Jean Hankins, February 2005). ↩

3. Otisfield's population in 1850 was 1,171. In 1900 it was 728, and in 1940 plunged to a low of 488. In 2000 it had risen to above 1500. ↩

4. From 1930 to 1934, the Congregational and Baptist Churches did unite as the Lake Thompson United Parish, but this union dissolved in 1934. See Jean F. Hankins, A History of the East Otisfield Free Baptist Church (The Church, 1999), p. 14. On the union church movement, see F. B. Wentworth, A Brief History of the Rural Church Movement in New England (Mechanic Falls, ME: The Author, 1980). Both works are available at the Maine State Library, Augusta. ↩

5. Sally Edwards, known as "Aunt Poppy Sally," was an opium addict (Spurr, History of Otisfield, p. 370). Dr. Barrows' diary for July 12, 1846, has this: " Got home and found Aunt Poppy Sally on the ground waiting for her opium." ↩

6. Diary of Mary Pride Knight Brackett, Hankins transcript, Maine Historical Society. She also describes attending a camp meeting held Sept. 3-4, 1840, and mentions other camp meetings held in 1842, 1843, and 1858. ↩

7. The Josiah Merrill Papers, Coll. 1524 at the Maine Historical Society, include manuscripts of some of Merrill's sermons as well as his journals. Merrill was speaking well before abolitionism became acceptable in New England. The first issue of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator did not appear for another five years. ↩

8. See The American Book of Days, ed. George W. Douglas (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1948), pp. 232, 241. Massachusetts abolished the holiday in 1895; Maine in 1907; New Hampshire in 1991. President Lincoln proclaimed a national fast day for April 30, 1863, asking for divine help in restoring national unity and peace. ↩

9. Barrows gives Hutchinson's first name as Stephen. Confusingly, the leader of the East Otisfield Baptist Church from 1869-72 was Joseph Hutchinson, probably a different person ↩