Dr. Halle T. Dillon medical licensure exam
Halle T. Dillon, an African American and a graduate of the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia, was the first woman licensed to practice medicine in the state of Alabama. At the time of the exam, she lived in Tuskegee and planned to work in Macon County. This medical examination, which...
Eliza Fielding diary
Eliza Fielding was born in 1847 and lived near Athens, Alabama. In this diary (1866 to 1867), she describes her daily life, discussing relationships; domestic duties (such as sewing and weaving); visitors to her home; religious camp meetings; and other activities. Her writings provide a glimpse...
Ellen Stephens Hildreth scrapbook correspondence
Ellen Stephens Hildreth of New Decatur, Alabama, was a local social and civic leader, as well as an advocate for women's suffrage and early childhood education. Her husband, C. J. Hildreth, published the following in her orbituary in the New Decatur Advertiser on January 6, 1916: To say nothing...
Instructions for sewing and fabric care
Illustrated book of instructions for sewing techniques and fabric care. The creator is unknown, but the work was compiled in the 1860s and is located in the Lela Legare papers at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Pages 1 through 4 are missing, and the index is incomplete....
Laura Beecher Comer diary
Laura Beecher (niece of abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher and cousin of Harriet Beecher Stowe) moved from New Haven, Connecticut, to Alabama in 1848. Later that year, she married James Comer, a planter in Russell County. Despite her family's strong ties to the abolitionist movement, Laura Beecher...
Lavinia Bright Walker diary
Lavinia Bright was born in 1916 in Alabama, and her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1920. There she attended Northwestern High School and Wayne State University, after which she taught elementary school for over forty years. She married William Walker in 1946, and the couple had one son....
Melissa Russell diary
Melissa Russell, a native of Springfield, Massachusetts, traveled to Alabama in 1835 with her brother, Henry. She kept this diary during their trip from New York to Mobile, and then up the Alabama River to Tallassee, where Henry worked as an Indian agent.In this diary, Russell describes fellow...
Nannie Nix Rayburn diary
Nannie Nix was in 1837 in Lawrence County, Alabama. After studying education at Mary Sharpe College in Winchester, Tennessee, she moved to Guntersville, Alabama. She taught in the public school there from 1862 to 1863 (when she married Samuel King Rayburn), and resumed teaching in 1871,...
Sally Randle Perry diary
After the death of her husband in the Civil War, Sally Randle Perry and her two sons continued to live at "Ingleside, the family plantation on the Alabama River in Dallas County. In this diary (1867 to 1868), she discusses farm life, child rearing, and the management of servants. She also...