Anna Winslow Green (1759-1780)
Introduction to the published diary, written by Alice Morse Earle in 1900:
In the year 1770, a bright little girl ten years of age, Anna Green Winslow, was sent from her far away home in Nova Scotia to Boston, the birthplace of her parents, to be “finished” at Boston schools by Boston teachers. She wrote with evident eagerness and loving care, for the edification of her parents and her own practice in penmanship, this interesting and quaint diary . . .
Diary, February 29, 1772
I have spun 30 knots of linning yarn, and (partly) new footed a pair of stockings for Lucinda, read apart of the pilgrim’s progress, coppied part of my text journal (that if I live a few years longer, I may be able to understand it, for aunt sais, that to her, the contents as I first mark’d them, were an impenetrable secret) play’d some, tuck’d a great deal (Aunt Deming says it is very true) laugh’d enough, & I tell aunt it is all human _nature_, if not human reason. And now, I wish my honored mamma a very good night.
The complete diary can be found on the Internet Archive here.
Background about Anna Green Winslow can be found here.
Read the text with your students and then look to the Seven Strategies for help in generating questions for your classroom. Possible questions include these:
- Strategy 1: What are you reading? (a diary) [NOTE to the teacher: You can use the excerpt from the introduction to the published diary in several ways. You can have students read it along with the diary, in which case you can ask which one is a primary source (the diary) and which one a secondary source (the introduction). You can give students the diary entry first and as them to tell you everything they can just from the diary, before you read them the introduction. Or you can give them the information from the introduction without having them read it.]
- Strategy 2: Who wrote the diary? (a girl named Anna) Why do you think she wrote it? (for her parents to read, to remember what she did) Why do you think that? (She says good night to her mother, so she clearly expects her mother to read what she’s writing.)
- Strategy 4: What does Anna describe? (what she did that day) What did she do? [NOTE to the teacher: You can go through the entry with students, clarifying what is unfamiliar: linning (linen), new footed (mended). pilgrim’s progress (the book Pilgrim’s Progress). Or you can have students figure out the rough meaning from the context, as that’s all that’s important, on one level.] What do you know about Anna? (She’s about twelve years old. She’s not with her mother, probably staying with her aunt. Her penmanship isn’t very good. She talks a lot. She does a lot of work.)