Researchers often look to Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker (1735–1807) for her observations and experiences during the founding decades of America. Scholars have consulted her massive diary—2,096 pages in the full print edition—for insights into the Quaker faith; the American Revolution; colonial, imperial, local, and national politics; trade and consumerism; domestic furnishings; gender; servitude and enslavement; immigration; expansion; medicine; gardening; births; sicknesses and death; family; sociability; crime; education and reading; women’s daily lives; and much, much more. Selections from the diary appeared in print starting in the late nineteenth century. The whole diary was edited and published in three hefty volumes in 1991, thanks to the meticulous work of Elaine Forman Crane and her team of scholars. The more recent digital edition is searchable by word or date (for a fee).1
Godbeer has discovered another use for this diary, along with other family papers, to form the basis of a joint...