Abstract

Eliza Calkins White and family moved from Vermont to the Townships in the late 1830s. Her journal, written sporadically between 1852 and 1874, offers a rare opportunity to examine the daily details of a world that has received little attention from historians, that of farm life in the borderland of southern Quebec. This thesis endeavours to convey a picture of that life as voiced by Eliza through the journal, while addressing its contents in terms of the questions debated in contemporary historical scholarship about the farm economy.
After a brief consideration of texts focussed on the Eastern Townships, this thesis first looks at the literatures that discuss the history, content, form and historical value of diaries and journals. The following chapters widen out like concentric circles to examine the content of Eliza's journal within the context of rural historiography. They evaluate the role of the women members of the family in the strategies of the farm economy, and the extent to which farm production in this particular time and place was geared towards the market. This journal shows women both in the farm economy as producers and in the marketplace as negotiators. Moreover, the products that were largely the result of women's labour that were sold or traded in the local market were an essential contribution to the stability of the family economy. Without such journals the work of women such as Eliza and her daughters and the intricacies of farm life would remain invisible.