DIARY OF A LITTLE GIRL IN OLD NEW YORK

(1849-1850)

Catherine Elizabeth Havens

August 6, 1849.

Xam ten years old to-day, and I am going to begin
a diary. My sister says it is a good plan, and
when I am old, and in a remembering mood, I
can take out my diary and read about what 1 did when
I was a little girl.

I can remember as far back as when I was only four
years old, but 1 was too young then to keep a diary, but
I will begin mine by telling what I can recall of that far¬
away time.

The first thing I remember is going with my sister in
a sloop to visit my aunts on Shelter Island. We had to
sleep two nights on the sloop, and had to wash in a tin
basin, and the water felt gritty.

These aunts live in a very old house. It was built in
1733 and is called the Manor House, and some of the
floors and doors in it were in a house built in 1635 of
wood brought from England.*
 

* iNote—This house is now in possession of Miss Cornelia Horsford, of
Cambridge, Mass., and was the subject of an article by the late Mrs.
Martha J. Lamb, in the November number of the Magazine of American
History for 1887,

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