The Diary of Calvin Fletcher and the Historians

While we all make New Year's resolutions, few of us ever keep them with the tenacity that Calvin Fletcher kept the one he apparently made on this day. The diary that he had begun in fragmentary fashion in 1817 and continued intermittently to 1829, he maintained religiously thereafter. In so doing, he provided us with an extraordinary record of his life and times. Published in nine volumes by the Indiana Historical Society from 1972 to 1983, The Diary of Calvin Fletcher represents perhaps the single most important printed source for understanding Indiana's history. In commemoration of Fletcher's two-hundredth birthday on 4 February 1998, Traces looks back at the diary and its impact on how we see ourselves.