Photograph showing outside of Diary of Henry H. Wadleigh of Lyme NH, dated 1872.
1872 was an important year for George Henry Wadleigh. He lost his father mid way, and he married at the end of the same year.
According to his diary, he “went to meeting on Sundays (most of the time anyway), split wood, went “down to the village” on errands, out to the mill, hayed the fields, blueberry picked, plowing and sowing grain, “paid my taxes,” and all the other endless mundane tasks of a farmer of that time. I know this because he kept a diary, and wrote in a very careful script, sometimes with ink and other times with pencil, for at least the years 1872 and 1874.
George H. Wadleigh had been born in 1851 in the small town of Lyme, New Hampshire, to Benjamin & Mary (Cushman) Wadleigh, ten years before the start of the Civil War. His life and his celebrations were intricately woven into the air and earth of Grafton County, and the tiny town in which he lived. In 1850 the town of Lyme had 1,618 people. Ten years later the population would drop to 1,572, followed by another drop in 1870 to 1,358. In 2010 the census had only risen to 1,716 people. Continue reading
