Washington's Manuscript Diaries

for 1795 and 1798
 

ROLAND BAUGHAIAN
 

N a red-letter day four years ago, January 9, 195 i, .Mr.
Charles Aloran, Jr., Columbia College AB 1929, made
a gift to his Alma .Mater such as few institutions have
ever received in the pa.st, and fewer still are likely to knoxx' in the
future. For nearly a century and a quarter—since 1827—Mr.
iMoran's mother's family had treasured two slim, paper-bound
volumes xx hich had come originally as the gift of George Wash¬
ington's nephew and literary executor, Bushrod Washington. The
volumes contain the manuscript diaries which the Father of our
Country had kept for the years 1795 and 1798. Before .VIr. Moran
placed them in the permanent custody of Columbia University,
they had been the last of the AVashington diaries known to have
remained in private hands. Altogether, some forty out of a pos¬
sible fifty-five volumes of these diaries are recorded as having
survived the 150 to 200 years that hax'c elapsed since they were
written: of these, thirty-six are in the Library of Congress; one
(the Joy Manuscript) is in the Detroit Public Library; another
(the Gribbel Manuscript) was acquired in 1947 to become a
permanent part of the AVashington memorial at Mount Vernon;
and finallx', the Moran volumes are now in the custodianship of
Columbia University.

The earlier of the Columbia diaries, that for the year 1795,
represents the record kept by AA'ashington during his next-to-last
year as President. The notes, totalling twelve pages, occur in a
pocket-size almanac. The American Repository of Useful In¬
formation for the year 1795, published in Philadelphia. \\'ashing-

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