1851
Monday Feb 3 have not been about house much on
account of my foot. It pains me a great deal & has
turned black under the nail. Could not sleep last night.
Have been most of the day mending Oakes A shop coat.
work awhile mending Mr Ames shop coat
Susan has a bad cold & cough so that she did not
go to school. This afternoon wrote a letter for Jane
to her nephew. This is a remarkably pleasant day.
Evelina had to sit down today on account of having dropped a flatiron on her foot and injured her toe. She wasn’t idle, however. It was Monday, after all, and no one was ever idle on a Monday. She took up her mending, working on the shop coats of her husband, Oakes, and her eldest son, Oakes Angier. The shop coats were used by the men for work, and only work, and had to be plenty sturdy enough to do physical labor in.
Little Susan (known as Susie by her brothers) stayed home from school today and rested. At age eight, Susan was beginning to learn how to sew, but her skills at this stage were too elementary to help her mother with the mending. Instead, she may have sat with her mother and read aloud, as sometimes happened, or perhaps her cough kept her in bed.
Jane McHanna, the servant who was busy today washing clothes, wanted to write a letter to a nephew. Like many of the other Irish immigrants, Jane was probably illiterate and so asked Evelina to write the letter for her. Evelina obliged. But would the nephew have been able to read the letter once he got it? And where was he? Back in Ireland or had he, too, made his way to America?
evelinaames 
Evelina and I have something in common today as my foot (feet) hurt, too.
Oh, dear. I trust you didn’t drop a flatiron on them. Hope they stop hurting.
I love this. I’m kind of jumping in mid-stream here (and don’t get me started about how hard it was for me to join WordPress!). Are these entries corresponding to the same date back then?
Welcome. The published entries do, indeed, correspond to the dates written. Evelina was a regular diarist; she only skipped one day in the entire two years that she wrote.
I’m working on a “Who’s Who” page that I hope to publish by the end of February. It might help with catching-up; you also should be able to visit older posts. The very first one was titled “New Year’s Day, 1851.”
Thanks for joining!
Sarah Lowry Ames