The Diary of Rachael Coolgan Van Trump Jester

This document is a restructured transcription of the Rachel Collgan Van Trump Jester's diary of 1887 and 1888.  She kept this diary for two years starting January 14th 1887 and ending at on the 31st of December 1888.  It is apparent that the dairy was originally in two volumes.  One page from the second volume, was found at the back of the dairy.  The page in in very bad condition but appears to be from near Christmas time.  It could not be deciphered to be included in the second diary. 

The editor has endeavored to make as close to an exact transcription as possible.  This document tries to capture the dairy as closely as she wrote it as possible.  The actual transcription document faithfully keeps the pages the same as the original document.  This should help any future individual who performs additional work with the diary. The punctuation is retained.  For many of her sentences, she uses what appears to be a comma instead of a period.

In her diary she speaks of “lesson leaves.”  Based on my research, these were Sunday School lessons that had been prepared by the Methodist Episcopal Church to be used each Sunday for the year.  They apparently were a complete lesson each week.  See http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofsundays00wardrich/historyofsundays00wardrich_djvu.txt for more precise information

The editor was ably assisted by his daughter Amanda in transcribing a portion of the dairy.

The Family

Pen, Penn	Pennell Coombe Jester
Rachael	Rachel Coolgan Trump Jester - Pen's Wife
Eddie	Edward Price Jester
Lena	Lena Mae Jester
Mary>	Mary Jester - Died Young no Date
Jimmie	James Albert Jester
Anna, Lizzie	Anna Lizzie Jester
Charley	Charles Bailey Jester
Walter, Clemmie	Walter Clements Jester
Simmie	Simeon Van Trump Jester

Not all words are visible as the pages are beginning to age and some of the writing is fading.  Those which are guessed at are enclosed in square braces [ ].  These that cannot be interpreted are signified by ellipsis …

The calendar for the year 1887 is shown at the beginning of that section.  The calendar for 1888 is shown at the beginning of that section. These calendars should help identify the days when the events were taking place.