Overview
This website is a place to share information about the transcription of the diaries of William V. Fiske, employed as an engineer with the B&M Rail Road a century ago. Bill Fiske maintained diaries from 1892 until 1954, recording not only information about the activities of the man responsible for operating a steam locomotive but also significant events affecting the daily life of a New Englander in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bill Fiske lived from the presidency of Abraham Lincoln to that of Dwight Eisenhower, a noteworthy period of American history, noted well in his diaries.
This is a work in progress, as we happily but laboriously transcribe the diaries. The transcriptions are in pdf form and we make no pretense that they are error free. We proofread as we proceed, but errors exist because of hard-to-read entries (usually accompanied with [?]) and the tedium of copying diary date headings, etc. We do intend to make a final proofreading of the thousands of pages at the completion of our work.
At the far left is an image of the actual diary page, and at the near left a copy of the transcription of that page. We make every effort to copy as precisely as we can the actual handwritten notes Bill Fiske made, including spelling errors, punctuation, etc. This makes the journal accessible to those who may have difficulty reading cursive writing and also makes the diaries searchable using the search feature of the document reader. We try to fit four diary pages on each pdf page, but when Bill is particularly verbose we can only fit two as we preserve the line length of his notes. Each diary year of over 365 pages (we include front and back matter of the journals) makes each year's transcribed pdf document over 100 pages long.
Last updated 8/19/2024