If Today Is Sunday, This Must Be 1798

A section of a diary kept between 1797 and 1800 by the Quaker farmer Jacob Peirce recently joined the collections of the Penn Libraries as Oversize Ms. Codex 2079, thanks to the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. Peirce was a busy man, but he found time to write brief entries about the work of the day on his farm, visits with family and friends, his health, and the weather. He also recorded his attendance at meeting for worship with a handful of Quaker meetings in the Brandywine Valley. His grandfather, George Peirce, had purchased 402 acres from William Penn’s commissioners in 1700. This land passed to Jacob’s father and was subsequently inherited by Jacob and his two brothers, who on their part of the land started the arboretum that was a predecessor of Longwood Gardens.