Extraordinarily disciplined, and always with an eye to posterity, Jonathan Fisher kept a journal for practically every day of his adult life. This amazing fact, and the even more amazing fact that most of them survive, give us an almost unparalleled look into the life of one remarkable man and the world in which he lived Adding to the interest is the fact that while still at Harvard, Jonathan Fisher invented his own shorthand for writing the diaries---not to keep entries secret, as one might imagine, but to save paper, then an expensive commodity. Late in life, Fisher estimated that he had saved many dollars worth of paper, to say nothing of hours of time.
For scholars who have studied Fisher, the coded diaries have sometimes posed a challenge. When Mary Ellen Chase undertook to write her groundbreaking biography of Fisher, she enlisted her sister, Edith Chase Weren, to translate all the known diaries, a herculean task, given nearly sixty years of 360-some entries a year. More recently, Prof. Raoul Smith has been taking a crack, and has given new translation to several entries.
Cover of one of Jonathan Fisher's 1822 Journals, with Title in Shorthand
In addition to the journals, Fisher kept records of his activities at the Congregational Church, and many of his letters survive, along with account books and notebooks about things that interested him. Through this wealth of primary information, we are lucky to be able to document many things about Fisher and the artifacts and house he left behind far better than most organizations, and it is always a thrill to have 'Eureka!' moments while sifting through the documents.
Fisher House volunteer archivist Marilyn Whittlesey, who is also the official Historian of the Congregational Church, has been mining the Church records, as well as Fisher's journals, for daily nuggets from Fisher's life, and publishing them in the Church Newsletter, 'The Friendly Visitor'. We will be publishing them here also, for your interest and entertainment.
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