John Woolman’s Diary: Witness Beyond the Familiar
Period: later travels
Longer journeys test principles through uncomfortable encounters and practical choices; most passages are not precisely day-dated.
Literary reading guide
Later journeys carry the record beyond familiar places, but the voice remains attentive to practical arrangements as well as to ethical concern. A travel account can be exact about departures and arrivals while still pausing over what an encounter demands of the narrator. The edition also contains other writings: the journal must be identified by its own boundaries.
For your own diary, distinguish a report of where you went from an explanation of what it meant. Let the two layers coexist without turning the travel day into a parable. A date is an anchor, not proof that every sentence around it was written at the same moment.
Excerpts from this period
Short excerpts from the public-domain edition named on the guide page. An excerpt that ends mid-sentence is an excerpt, not a whole entry.
25th day of 9th month, 1764 [September 25, New Style]
At our Yearly-meeting at Philadelphia, on the twenty-fifth Day of the ninth Month, 1764
The author places a gathering at a definite date without turning it into a generalized maxim. Source edition
2nd day of 9th month, 1767 [September 2, New Style]
On the second Day of the ninth Month, 1767, with the Unity of Friends, I set off on a Visit
The entry connects travel plans to the social network behind them. Source edition
5th day of 5th month, 1768 [May 5, New Style]
On the fifth Day of the fifth Month, 1768, I left Home under the humbling Hand of the Lord
A journey is narrated in the vocabulary of humility rather than triumph. Source edition
11th day of 6th month, 1769 [June 11, New Style]
The eleventh Day of the sixth Month, 1769. Sundry Cases have happened, of late Years
The unusual short dated preface introduces an ethical discussion of treatment of enslaved people. Source edition
8th day of 6th month, 1772 [June 8, New Style]
On the eighth Day of the sixth Month, 1772, we landed at London
Arrival is registered in a sober practical clause amid an extended itinerary. Source edition
2nd day of 8th month, 1772 [August 2, New Style]
The second Day of the eighth Month, and first of the Week. Was this Day at Sheffield
A place, date, and day of the week fix a moment in an otherwise continuous journey. Source edition
An essay by the TAEONIA editors. Quotations are limited to texts in the public domain.