1821
The Year is 1821
Phila Shove sat down to her private journal and opened its pages. She began to pen her thoughts and her thanks to her Lord on a crisp January morning with wishes of courage and prosperity for her future:
“1st This morning ushers in the new year and may I be rightly assisted to render the Praise due to my Blessed Redeemer for his manifold favours [sic] during the past, and to solicit a, continuence [sic] of them, through the present if consistent to his Divine will. May my mind be so established on the Immoveable Rock as not to be moved and tossed by any vicissitudes of fortune that I may be equally prepared to bear adversity and prosperity without being either dejected by the former or elate by the latter.”
Phila Tripp née Shove was a Quaker woman who lived most of her life in Fall River during the early nineteenth century. She was employed as a schoolteacher before her marriage to Phillip Tripp on October 17, 1821.
Her extant diaries diligently chronicle seven years of her life, daily, from 1817-1823. It is through her careful journaling we can get a glimpse back in time and discover what was important to her. She reveals the inner workings of her own social network that would have been lost to time.
The set of three paper journals have been preserved in a beautiful state with minimal flocking and discolorations, the multicolored marbleized covers remain vibrant and intact.
Notice the message Phila chose for the inside cover: “The Source of True Happiness. The happiness of human kind Consists in rectitude of mind. A will subdu’d to reason’s sway, And passions practis’d to obey. An open and a gen’rous heart Refin’d from selfishness and art Patience which mocks at fortunes power And wisdom neither sad nor sour.”
The stanza, which clearly resonated with her, can be found in “Marriage and home: or proposal and espousal, a Christian treatise on the most sacred relations to mortals known” however, this was published in 1888 by “a clergyman.” The earliest publication I was able to find was in 1844, so the origin of the poem and its author is, as of this writing, unknown.
What do you think she would want us to glean from these words?