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© 2005-2010 John Deitz

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Mrs. H. M. Raynor (Hannah Reeve Raynor) lived in Brookhaven Hamlet for much of her later adult life.  She was the second wife of Edward S. Raynor, a merchant.  They were married between 1860 and 1870.  She had children by her first husband, Stephen Craft, and one child by her marriage to Edward.  Their home was on on the northeast corner of South Country and Beaverdam Roads.  It is no longer extant.

She faithfully maintained a simple diary from 1883 to 1906.  While at first it appears to be just a daily weather report, as one reads on a sense of her daily life and the routine of the community develops. 

She referred most of the time to people by their first names, and I have not yet identified exactly whom many of them were.  She appeared to be related to some of the people mentioned, but the relationship is not always clear.    She was apparently a faithful Methodist (her father was a Methodist minister), and sometimes refers to fellow parishioners as Brother or Sister.  Brewster and Parnal Reeve Rose are frequent guests or were visited.  Parnal is her sister, and lived at the east end of Beaverdam Road.  The diary sometimes refers to an "Aunt Parnal," perhaps her father's sister.  In a simple straightforward way she recorded the life events of the community.
The scanning of this document was done by Marty Van Lith, from the original.  There are 116 pages in the diary.   Clicking on the icon at the bottom of the page will display a table of contents sorted by page number.