Box 3

Scope and Contents From the Collection: In his diaries, John Stephen Benezet gives brief descriptions of his daily activities and observations of life in antebellum Philadelphia from 1838 to 1850. By the time he begins to keep these journals, Benezet is already a husband and father supporting a family of at least four children as a clerk in the United States Mint in Philadelphia. He gives no account of his own childhood and family history. His writing style suggests that Benezet was a man of measured precision and accounting. As...