Carver Simpson was born in rural Ontario in 1859; twenty years later he was attending school and not very happy about it. We know that because his diaries, illustrated with little sketches of farm animals and wildlife, are included in the collection of rural diaries, some of which are housed in the University of Guelph Library’s Archives & Special Collections, and we can read in Simpson’s own handwriting: “I went to school and put in one miserable day.”

To help make these diaries more accessible to researchers and others with an interest in the daily life of those times, the U of G’s McLaughlin Library is hosting a Rural Diary Archive Website Launch & Transcribe-A-Thon event Sept. 24. Volunteers are invited to bring a laptop and help transcribe diary pages into searchable text for future researchers.

The journals are funny in places, surprising in others and give fascinating insights into the personality and lives of the diarists.

One page in Simpson’s journal, for example, covers late February to early March in 1881. His handwriting is clear, although some words are hard to make out. He faithfully records the weather each day. He’s a master of understatement as he describes a student getting a “thrashing” at school and later how two people are thrown in jail for theft. The reader can’t help but feel a bit sorry for a woman named Jessie: Carver gives her a ride home on horseback but she falls off twice, landing once on her head.

The Rural Diary Archive Website Launch & Transcribe-A-Thon will take place on the Library’s first floor in the Academic Town Square from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. To register, email ruraldiaryarchive@gmail.com or call 519-824-4120 ext. 53888 by Sept. 15.