In April of 1854 Elizabeth
Alice Ely began a series of diaries. The daughter of John
Griswold Ely and
Sally Pratt Williams,
she was 18 years old at the time. She and her family
lived in the house now known as the "Ely
Homestead". It stands overlooking the
Connecticut River at the end of Brockways Ferry Road
in the section of Lyme, Connecticut known as Hamburg.
The river flows today as it
did when Elizabeth Alice sat in her room and gazed
out on the river where her father kept his sloop and
fished for Connecticut River shad. The river was a
highway plied by sailing ships and steamships
carrying passengers and cargo.
Summer and winter the river
provided a livelihood and a roadway for the family.
They rowed across the river to journey down to Essex
in the summer and walked on the ice in the winter.
Elizabeth Alice chronicled a
life closely tied to the river, family and friends.
She was a social person who often traveled by sailing
ship to New York or spent the winter in Boston with
relatives. She walked many miles to shop and to visit
friends. Her brothers often rowed her to Hamburg and
she walked back.
Her chosen work was that of
teacher for which she trained in Essex. She met and
married Henry Sill Lord. Their son Archie Ely Lord's
son was my father Rossiter Ely Lord.
Her diaries depict the life
of a young woman in the waning years of the 19th
century. They give a view of another time when there
were no automobiles nor airplanes. People walked,
rowed, sailed, took the train or traveled by horse
and buggy. The Civil War came leaving its mark on the
family.
Diaries for the year 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861 ,
1862, 1865 1869, 1870,
or
1871
