For over a century, William Warren Vaughan and his descendants kept a diary of the happenings around Vaughan Homestead. They recorded everyday mundane details like visitors to the house or bloom dates of their favorite flowers in the gardens. They also kept track of work to the house and grounds, like when they put on a new roof, fixed a broken window or resurfaced the tennis court. They pasted in news articles, invitations, birthdays cards, photographs, sketches and more.
These house diaries provide valuable information that helps us to interpret the lives of the people who lived at or visited the Homestead and to preserve the historic fabric of the house and grounds. Since its establishment as a non-profit in 2002, VWHH managers have kept this tradition alive through calendars and historic documentation processes. But without the regular personal diary entries, something is lost. The record is less human. So we have endeavored to keep a “House Diary Blog” in which we record daily or weekly happenings around the Homestead in the brief but personal style of the original diaries. We hope you enjoy!