Villanova University: Memorable Days: The Emilie Davis Diaries (Web)

Emilie Davis was living in Philadelphia during the U.S. Civil War. When the war began, she was twentyfour years old and a „free“ African American woman. She was attending school and sewing clothes to support herself.

In her diaries, Emilie Davis wrote short daily entries recounting events, both big and small. Mixed in with the minutiae of the writer’s everyday life are entries recounting African Americans‘ celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, nervous excitement during the battle of Gettysburg, and their collective mourning of President Lincoln.

This website is a transcription of Emilie Davis’s three pocket diaries for the years 1863, 1864, and 1865.

The diaries allow readers to experience the war in real time, as events unfolded for Civil War Americans. Emilie Davis’s preferred spelling of most words has been maintained throughout, and judicious and careful annotations fill in some of the details left unexplained in the diary.

• Access to the transkripts (Web).

The diaries are part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s (HSP) collections (Web). The originals were scanned as part of The People’s Contest: A Civil War Era Digital Archiving Project, a project of Pennsylvania State University Libraries and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center.

The Website is a project of Villanova University and its Falvey Memorial Library, with support from the History Department, the Communication Department, and the Villanova Institute for Teaching and Learning.