Information Sheet

 

 

R         Finkel, J. P.

93                    Farm diary, 1876-1882.

                                    145 pages, photocopy.

 

 

 

This is the diary of J. P. Finkel, a farmer in Amanda Township, Fairfield County, Ohio.  Top­ics include agriculture, animal husbandry, family affairs, and rural life.  Periods covered are 1 January 1876--7 October 1876 and 1 January 1879--7 January 1882.

 

J. P. Finkel owned a farm near East Ringgold in Amanda Township, Fairfield County, Ohio.  He kept this daily journal (with occasional gaps; see the Shelf List) between the years 1876 and 1882.  In it he entered accounts of plowing, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and so on, but his major purpose seems to have been to record his troubled relationship with his wife, Louise, and her three sons, George, Frederick, and Ote (Otis?).  Finkel was especially dis­tressed by George’s dis­solute ways and by Louise's efforts to gain financial control of the farm.  These ac­tivities are de­scribed in sometimes painful detail, and the difficulties were unresolved at the close of the journal.  In an incidental manner the diary discloses the ambiance and rhythms of a rural lifestyle in late nineteenth-century Ohio.

 

 

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