What was the weather like . . .?

Weather diary kept at Ashford, Connecticut, 1837-1838.

One of the more intriguing questions I get from researchers and writers is “what was the weather like on May 12, 1835”, or some equally distant date. Amazingly, I can often find the answer using regular diaries and what we refer to as “weather diaries.”

Connecticut Globeskirters: Gertrude Barnum’s Travel Diary

“With the first day of my journey, I commence this first page of my diary; hoping that the whole jaunt will be as favorable to my compositive powers as this beginning:”

So begins the travel diary of sixteen-year-old Gertrude Barnum, who left Danbury, Connecticut for a trip across the Atlantic to Paris and London with her mother, Sarah, on June 11, 1850. Her diary, along with her mother’s passport (Gertrude did not have her own passport, but traveled on her mother’s), are in the CHS manuscript collection and demonstrate the participation of Connecticut women in travel and tourism—a trend that would only grow as the century progressed.