Lorette's Diary

John 25 and Lorette 21 settle into their second year of marriage. They live with her parents who are remodeling their house on Shepard Road, Batavia, NY. Baby brother, Charles is 3 and Lorette helps with his care. Daily they see their relatives and friends marry and have children. Lorette gives music lessons to neighbors and attends singing school and weekly sees her best friend and half-aunt Elizabeth Showerman Quance who lives around the corner on East Road with her husband Israel. John attends a debate club, reads a book on spiritualism, moves his barn, goes fishing, raises sheep, makes maple syrup, and plays baseball. Life is filled with dinners, picnics, attending various churches, deaths and marriages, and a lot of visiting.

Andrews, Ashley, Benedict, Benton, Bostwick, Brainard, Brown, Bryan, Buell, Burt, Calkins, Chaddock, Charles, Cole, Cornwell, Cortez, Covell/Coville, Cummings, Davis, Denton, Dorman, Emmons, Farnham, Fillmore, Fister, Green, Hamilton, Hart, Hathaway, Hawley, Holden, Holter/Holton, Houghton, Huggins, Huntington, Jackman, Johnson, Judd, Judson, Keaton, Knowlton, Lamkin, Lane, Lathrop, Lawrence, Leonard, Levings, Lincoln, Loomis, Lord, Lovelace, Lyman, Lyons, Madden, Marsh, Marshall, McMillen, Moore, Newton, Northrup, Norton, Nott, Olin, Parmer, Patterson, Perry, Phelps, Plato, Powers, Putnam, Quance, Read, Reamer, Rogers, Rolland, Sale, Shaw, Shepard, Showerman, Skinner, Smith, Sprague, Stevens, Stewart, Strong, Sweetland, Thayer, Thompson, Town, Waite, Walker, Wales, Ware, Watts, Webster, Weed, West, Wilkenson, Woodward, Wortendyke

Life as Lorette presents the journey from diary discovery to revealing pioneers of Genesee County, New York.

• An earthquake hit Tokyo and about 107,000 died
• Frederick Laggenheim took the first photo of a solar eclipse
• H. Sichel & Sohne, the producers of the popular Blue Nun white wine, was founded in Germany
• The SS Central America sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, cargo includes 43 bars of gold

• In Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court rules that a slave is not a citizen
• James Gibbs of Virginia patented a chain-stitch single-thread sewing machine
• The California gold rush town of Columbia burned down in a fire that was blamed on a Chinese cook; the miners soon evicted all Chinese from the town
• Mormon leader Brigham Young called out the Nauvoo Legion to fight the U.S. Troops if they enter Utah Territory
• Lithographers Nathaniel Currier and Charles Ives become partners
• Count Agoston Haraszthy founded the Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma, California
• Paul Broca discovered that particular regions of the brain are specialized for particular functions
• The first US coin to be called a nickel was the copper and nickel one-cent piece

• The first passenger elevator is installed in a New York City store
• Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead and architect Calvert Vaux won the competition to develop New York City's Central Park
• New York City's Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company branch fails, precipitating a financial panic; 4,932 U. S. firms fail
• John Alsop King takes office as the first Republican governor
• The American Chess Association organized. The first major US chess tournament was held in NYC

• Treaty with the Seneca Tonawanda Band was signed restoring about 8,000 acres of land to the Seneca Nation
• The Genesee River floods carrying away buildings on Rochester's Main Street Bridge
• Susan B. Anthony and William Lloyd Garrison speak at an Abolition meeting in Corinthian Hall, Rochester
• Le Roy's Ingham Collegiate Institute is chartered as Ingham University
• Belva Lockwood graduates from Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, NY; she later runs for U.S. President in 1884 and 1888
• Polly Hoag Frisch's second husband, Otto Frisch, deserts her in the same year that two more of her children die in the Town of Alabama. Relatives, neighbors, and friends are suspicious