Use Restrictions

Permission to publish material from Nellie Morrill Diary must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.

Access Restrictions

The collection is open for research.

Preferred Citation

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Nellie Morrill Diary, Ms2016-020, Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.

Acquisition Information

The Nellie Morrill Diary was purchased by Special Collections in 2015.

Processing Information

The processing, arrangement, and description of the Nellie Randolph Morrill Diary was completed in October 2016.

Biographical / Historical

Nellie Arabell Morrill was born on 12 March 1847, to Ira Morrill and Mary Smith. She had three younger siblings--Adelbert, Elmer, and Eva Morrill--born between 1870 and 1879. Nellie was raised in Randolph, Orange County, Vermont.

Nellie married Henry Clay Waldo on 11 February 1869, according to 1900 Vermont Census. The couple had two children: Martha Frances Waldo, born 16 July 1872, and Willis Henry Waldo, born 30 May 1875. Martha Waldo died August 5th 1874.

Henry Clay Waldo Died on 4 August 1913. Nellie and her son Willis survived him. Twenty years late Nellie died on 18 January 1933 of pulmonary congestion.

Sources: Vermont Census; Ancestry Library Edition

Scope and Content

The Nellie Morrill Diary contains personal notes on day to day activities, and sections for monitary and memoranda accounting. The diary is primarily composed of descriptions of the Morrill's daily activities, including weather, responsibilities, meals, recreational activities, and brief accounts of meetings. Her entries often feature references to "Henry" (Henry Waldo), to whom she became engaged in March of 1865 and who she later married. Although kept in the final part of the Civil War, there are very few references to war-time news or events, though she notes on Sunday, April 23, "Went to meeting Abe Lincolns [sic] funeral sermon was preached in the afternoon..."

Morrill sometimes slips into an apparent code, replacing letters within names with numbers, but it is done inconsistently.