Collections : [College of William and Mary]

Collection contains a single diary of American woman Fanny Kean Leake Pattaon (1867-1939) during her time with the American Episcopal Mission in Kyoto, Japan. She and her husband Rev. J. Lindsay Patton (1866-1915), worked in Japan as missionaries for fifteen years starting in the late 1880s. By the time the diary was written, they had been overseas for several years and had five children, some of whom were born in Japan. The diary includes documentation about Fanny and her husband's religious activity and travel, as well as details about her every day life doing missionary work and teaching. It also has information about the Otsu Incident (an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Czar Nicholas Alexandrovich during his visit to Japan in 1891), and Russia and Japan's falling out afterwards. Fanny in fact visited the Czar the day after the Otsu Incident.

Collection contains a manuscript diary kept by a teenage girl studying at Coombe Cottage School, documenting the academic and social life of the last generation of girls to come of age in the antebellum South. It also includes recipes and newspaper clippings.

The collection consists of a Wanamaker Department Store-branded diary used by George Howard Snyder Jr., a student of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA in 1929. The writings are primarily about Snyder's college experiences inluding classes, studying, and outings with his friends and classmates. He took classes in Hygiene, Accounting, History, Economics, Politics, Engineering, and German. George often wrote letters to his mother and his girlfriend, Betty. On March 4th, he made note of Herbert Hoover's innaugeration. He also remarked on traveling to Reeding, Pennslyvania with his father to see a new facility.