Diary from 19th century Middletown resident revealed

December 14, 2009  
Filed under Lifestyle

By Casey Film
Round Table editor

The 113-year-old diary of 19th-century Middletown citizen Allen Sparrow was recently converted into a digital format by the Middletown Valley Historical Society.

The 1,000-page diary, written by Sparrow from 1859-1896, is a record of his daily observations about the weather, local events, deaths, births, and the effect of the Civil War on the local community. Sparrow used no punctuation when he wrote and would write in the margins in order to conserve paper.

 “It is great to have [a record] from that period of time,” said George Bringham, one of the organizers of the digitization project. “You can hear what a person from that time was thinking, which is so valuable about [Sparrow’s] diary.”

Sparrow considered himself an ordinary citizen, even though his diary preserved a significant part of Middletown’s history.

“I don’t believe he played any important or significant role [in Middletown’s history] but in keeping this daily diary,” said Andrew Bowen, a town administrator who helped with the diary project. “You get a glimpse into what life was like back at the turn of the century.”

Sparrow writes with surprising emotion about the Civil War, reflecting on the horror of mass graves and piles of bodies in the streets. He explains the animosity that the war created as people took sides.

Sparrow writes of how” friends would quarrel…church members fell out and would not speak…how people would argue” and how “people were sacred here.”

The diary depicts the poor traveling conditions of the soldiers who were “at least one half barefooted and miserable cloths, and looked like they had been half starved.” Sparrow’s insight into the behavior of the soldiers and their interaction with town members is interesting and reads like a historical novel.

 The diary describes the ransoming of Middletown, giving exclusive information about the reaction of the citizens to the experience. General Early, whom Sparrow refers to as “Old Early,” brought his rebel army into the town demanding “five thousand dollars to keep him from burning the town.”

When the General was told that the ransom could not be raised, Sparrow writes that Early “said that he could raise it.” Sparrow then describes how local citizens tried to negotiate the price lower, and how the rebel soldiers went from house to house demanding money and threatening the people.

“They would go into people’s houses in the country, and if they did not give them, what they wanted, they would threaten to set fire to the house,” Sparrow wrote. “In some places they carried coals on a shovel in the rooms before the people would give up their money.”

He tells stories of local families who lost their sons to the war or who were reunited with them after long months. Sparrow relates one story of a farmer who fought alongside his son to protect their cattle and horses from the rebel army.

“[Rebel soldiers] wanted to go up and get the old gentleman’s horses, but he got wind that they were coming so he fixed himself behind a large cherry tree and when they came in range, commenced firing and had his son load,” Sparrow wrote. “When some asked him how he felt while he was firing and his son was loading, he said he felt like he could whip a whole regiment of the thieving scoundrels.”

Sparrow asserts that he is “writing this for the young people,” and for those “that were not born at the time of the war.” However, his reports on the Civil War are brief, and only occupy a section of the diary.

Much of the diary is made up of notes on the weather, births, deaths and costs of items that Sparrow was selling.

Sparrow himself was an average citizen but one who was well-known and well-respected in Middletown. It is written in his obituary, “No other citizen has a wider acquaintance or was more universally respected than he.”

He was a Sunday school teacher and a long-time member of the Middletown Debating Society. He ran a wagon huckster business through Frederick and Washington counties from Middletown, selling dried produce from the back of his cart.

Each page of the diary was scanned into a computer and saved on disks by Crowley Micrographics of Frederick and is available for viewing at the Municipal Center in Middletown.

Bowen said that digitizing the diary “will preserve it for all future generations to look at and remember their heritage.”

The MVHS hopes to have the diary transcribed and available to the public sometime in the next few years.