PA Photos and Documents
Chester County History Center – Mary Eliza Brinton Hopkins Diary Collection
This digitized diary includes a range of daily life events recorded by Mary Eliza Brinton Hopkins. Mary Eliza Brinton was born in 1830/31 to William Brinton (1785-1878) and Gulielma Cooper Brinton (1793-1879/80) in the family residence near Gap in Lancaster County. Known siblings were Jane Brinton (married surname Smith) (1826-1895) and Joseph Brinton (1828-1917). The family was Quaker; as an adult, Joseph was active in the Wilburite schisms in the 1850s and 1860s in the Society of Friends. At age 15, Mary Brinton attended Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school, from October 1846 until May 1847.
This diary mentions a number of activities including having tea with family and friends, doing puzzles, sewing, horseback riding, canning peaches, making applesauce, examining flowers, and housecleaning. A number of outings are described including attendance at Meeting for Worship and a visit to Birmingham Township in Chester County to see John Forsythe and then to nearby Westtown School (in 1855 and 1856). Also described is a train ride to Philadelphia where Brinton visited the Asylum for the Blind, the Academy of Natural Science, the house where William Penn once lived, the Academy of Fine Arts, Independence Hall and the State House. She also attended an evening lecture. A journey to New England in 1856 took the traveling party through New York to Newport, Rhode Island, to Nantucket, and back home through New Jersey and Philadelphia, all on various modes of transportation including sailing.
Family news such as visits, the birth of a baby, and a family member’s injury from a train accident (First month / January 1857) are also described. The volume includes a printed scene of Three Spring Farm, the home of William and Gulielma Brinton, drawn by Susan Brinton, and an oak tree at the farm. Pencil drawings of a tree, other landscapes with homes and pastoral scenes are also found.
Mary Brinton married Joseph James Hopkins (1808-1909) of Baltimore in 1861. Mary Brinton Hopkins died in 1926. She is buried in the Brinton Family Burial Ground in Lancaster County.