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Chris Higgins
Twitter from 1937
by Chris Higgins - January 30, 2009 - 2:01 PM

Genny SpencerBlogger David Griner recently came across a “line-a-day” diary kept by his great aunt from 1937 through 1941. Griner’s great aunt (Genny Spencer) kept the diary during her early teens, while she lived on a farm in rural Illinois. The entries in the diary are all very brief — one line a day — which caused Griner’s sister to observe, “This is the Twitter of the 1930s.” A bit of planning and programming ensued, and now we’ve got it — a day-by-day Twitterstream of entries from more than seventy years ago. Here are a few recent posts:

Daddy went to town. Creeks got up. Rained. Fred much better now. Mrs. O’Farrell died.

Had a squabble with the boys over skating. Got Mamma a lot of persimmons.

Stayed home from school because of a bad cold. Kerby went to Johnsons’. Norman shot a rabbit. He is 8 years old. First one.

Got 2 calves from Akins. 3 days old. Mamma and Daddy spent the day with Akins. Peggy Lou, Wallis Warfield are calves’ names.

Anyway, it goes on. Some days are more eventful than others, but frankly there seems be a lot of illness and suicide — at least in the first days of the diary. Follow the diary as it’s posted here, or read more about the diary written by David Griner. (Including the interesting information that Genny Spencer is still alive, though suffering from severe dementia.)

If you like this kind of thing, also check out The Orwell Diaries. Apparently there’s also a Twitter diary of a 99-year-old from 1974.

(Via Fake Plastic Noodles.)

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Comments (8)

  1. My mom’s mom has kept daily diaries for more than 60 years although severe dementia has limited that over the last couple years. Maybe translating them into an online form will be something I will do with hers after she passes.

    posted by Sarah in CA on 1-30-2009 at 2:12 pm

  2. It really is a fantastic idea. Thanks for passing it along!

    Melanie
    (Fake Plastic Noodles)

    posted by Melanie Seasons on 1-30-2009 at 3:03 pm

  3. Thanks for writing about this project, Chris. The response has been great, which will help inspire me to keep plunking in more entries.

    One fun gem I haven’t shared yet: In an entry from 1938, she mentions hearing “an awful thing on the radio.” We googled the date. It was “War of the Worlds.”

    posted by David Griner on 1-30-2009 at 5:14 pm

  4. Very cool – definitely will be following this twitter!

    Sarah, my grandma does the same thing, because of her descent into dementia. It helps keep her aware of where she was and what she did on certain days.

    posted by Sara on 1-30-2009 at 9:41 pm

  5. I love that they named the calf after the Duchess of Windsor. I wonder if it was supposed to be a compliment or not.

    posted by Camille on 1-30-2009 at 10:35 pm

  6. When I broke my leg in 2005 I had nothing better to do so I kept a log and have been doing it ever since. It is such fun to see what went on weeks ago! Try it, you’ll like it.

    posted by Jane on 1-31-2009 at 7:53 am

  7. I have my grandfather’s “Line A Day” diary from 1918-1921. It follows him from life on his German immigrant’s father’s farm in upstate NY (”Killed Barney. Dragged his body out to the edge of the woods.” Thank goodness Barney was a lame horse!) to life at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during WWI, including the 1918 flu pandemic, where he talks about all the young men dying around him, to meeting my grandmother, to getting married. It’s a wonderful document about the most important years of his life. A friend suggested I turn it into a one-man show.

    It’s a shame we don’t have more documents like this.

    posted by Will on 1-31-2009 at 8:30 am

  8. I worked on a Civil War diary once that was full of one-liners. Usually the guy would just remark on the weather. He joined up with Sherman’s march to the sea. I think his entry for the day they burned Atlanta was something along the lines of “Burned Atlanta.” It killed me that he couldn’t be bothered to say more.

    Anyway, Twitter and Facebook and blogs are all well and good, but if you care about the future at all, print that stuff out!!

    posted by Snork on 2-2-2009 at 5:24 pm

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