Mar 15, 2012 - Sale 2273

Sale 2273 - Lot 234

Price Realized: $ 1,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (NEW HAMPSHIRE.) [Rogers, Daniel.] Manuscript diary of an Exeter clergyman, kept in an interleaved copy of Nathaniel Ames's An Astronomical Diary; or, An Almanack for the Year . . . 1757 (Drake 3105; Evans 7830). [16] printed pages, 6 interleaved manuscript leaves. 16mo, unbound; stitch holes in margins, first and final printed leaves worn, otherwise only minor wear. Exeter, NH, January to December 1757
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Daniel Rogers (1707-1785) was a 1725 graduate of Harvard and longtime clergyman in Exeter, NH. He does not sign this diary, but entries concerning his family on 21 October and 16 November make his identity clear. According to Bell's History of Exeter, "For more than half a century he kept in interleaved almanacs a brief record of his daily life and employments, which show him to have been an amiable, faithful and devoted religious teacher."
This diary traces his ministry and travels throughout southeastern New Hampshire and neighboring Massachusetts, with frequent reference to local births, marriages, and deaths. It makes frequent note of current events, most notably a passage concerning the massacre at Fort William Henry (fictionalized in Last of the Mohicans): "Sorrowfull tydings of ye Fort at Lake George being taken, our men stript &c. Sorrowfull tydings of Maj. Jno. Gilman's being killed by ye Indians, which afterward prov'd other wise" (18 August). Local earthquakes are mentioned on 8 July and 10 November, and Rogers recorded an eminent visitor on 17 March: "Rev. Mr. [Gideon] Hawley, missionary to the Indians of the Six Nation was here & pr lecture."