Call Number:

MC.801.01.001

Repository:

Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections

Extent:

0.5 linear ft. (1 volume)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Sarah D. Wilt diary (HC.MC.801.01.001), Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, PA.

Date:

1864-1872 (inclusive)

Creator:

Wilt, Sarah D.

Form:

Diaries

Abstract:

This collection contains a diary created by Sarah D. Wilt between the years 1864 and 1872. In her entries she wrote about traveling with her family.

Sarah D. Wilt was born on November 14, 1853, to Benjamin Wilt and Susannah Dobbs Wilt in Kittanning, Pennsylvania. Benjamin Wilt was a commercial broker. In 1864, Sarah Wilt moved with her family to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1868, she started a diary, and began it with memories of her family's move to Philadelphia. In 1869, the family moved to Allegheny City, on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1871, the family moved again, this time to Petersburg, Pennsylvania. In 1884, Sarah D. Wilt married Clement Dale, a lawyer from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. They had three children, Mary Edith Dale (b. 1886), Arthur Clement Dale (b. 1889), and Marion Ethel Dale (b. 1891). Sarah D. Wilt Dale died on September 16, 1930.

(Information from U.S. Census data and "Clement Dale Commemorative Biographical Record").

Sarah D. Wilt's diary starts with her family's 1864 move to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, the entries concerning the years 1864 to early 1868 were written in 1868, when she began writing in the diary regularly. In her diary, Wilt wrote about her daily life helping her mother, attending school, and caring for her siblings. Wilt and her family visited multiple philanthropic and educational institutions in Pennsylvania, and Wilt described these visits in detail in her diary. She visited the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, the Burd Orphan Asylum, the Blind Asylum, the Franklin Institute, Girard College, and the Pittsburgh Female College. Other interesting occurences in her diary include her summer visit to New York City to see her grandparents, her description of her family getting scarlet fever, and her descriptions of sermons at the many local churches she attended.