Prologue to Ida Farr's 1872 journal written by her granddaughter Doris Nelson Newman. It provides illuminating context and family history, especially about Ida's parents Eleazer Farr and Charity Tandy, and about Ida's own childhood in Philadelphia.
The Worcester/Boston Trip consists of original diary entries (eventually copied by the Nelson brothers into Sketches of Our Home Life, Vol. 2) that provide a detailed account of a trip to Worcester and Boston by one of the brothers. The diary entries include details about the boys’ train rides, meeting at the First Baptist Salem Sq., a trip to a YMCA to see their first basketball game, as well as trips to the County Jail and Art Museum with Aunt Sadie.
Sketches of Our Home Life, Vol 1 is a detailed account about notable aspects of the Nelson family’s life written by Hial, Ida, Elmer, Arthur, and Walter. This volume includes an opening journal entry by Ida, poetry by Hial, including “The Joys of the Farmers Boy,” “Our Early Play Times” by Walter, “Our Cameras” by Elmer, hunting and camping entries from Arthur and Elmer, as well as other notable happenings of the family’s everyday lives.
In March of 1897, Elmer, Arthur, and Walter state that they wrote Sketches of Our Home Life Vol. 2 to “get in some of [their] later adventures.” These adventures include accounts of hunting and camping trips around New Hampshire, descriptions of the Nelsons’ “ideal camera,” “The Three Great Snow Storms of 1898,” and their perspective of the Spanish-American War.
Check out Part 1 of our interview with Beatrice Jillette, granddaughter of Elmer Nelson and current resident in Goshen, NH. In this interview, she discusses her decision to move to Goshen from NYC, her various jobs held while living in Goshen for 50 years, the history of the Nelson family reunion, her archival work with the Goshen historical society, her feelings about her grandfather, growing up in the 19th century, and her reaction to the discovery of the Nelson brothers’ juvenilia.