The Diary of Thomas Minor

Thomas Minor (1608-1690) was born in England and came to New England about 1630. Minor was a farmer, and he also had a number of public responsibilities. These included town treasurer, leader of the militia, selectman, and brander of horses. He also participated in church and in town meetings.

Thomas Minor left a terse record of the second half of his life in the form of a diary. This diary is a journey into the world of the colonial years leading up to and immediately following King Philip's War (1675-1676). Although it rarely gives details, it does give us a glimpse into his daily life and community activities. Thomas records many births, marriages, and deaths among his neighbors. It served as a calendar and a record of planting, harvesting, and of unusual weather conditions. It is truly his farmers almanac.

He began the year in March, as people in England and New England did until the mid-eighteenth century. While his spelling is idiosyncratic and therefore difficult to read, the journal is a valuable record of how written English looked at that time and probably also of how Minor pronounced his words.

The Minor family cared for the diary until ... it was finally published in book form in 1899.

Reference:

• The Diary of Thomas Minor, Stonington, Connecticut, 1653-1684. Prepared For Publication By Sidney H. Miner and George D. Stanton, Jr., 1899
• History in a Minor Key, or, the Life of a Seventeenth-Century New England Farmer, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, 2006

Sample Entries from the Diary
	Year of 1656/7 Year of 1661/2 Year of 1667/8 Year of 1675/6 Year of 1682/3
The entire diary is currently on-line at Google Books.

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Updated 29 August 2009.