Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/96

 86 Documents me verry fully by her. I have Just time to aquant you that I am settled here as a Schoolmaster and can really say with great truth that I never lived a genteel regulare life untill now. I shall write you again soon verry fully and untill then I am with my blessing to you my Dear and my Dear Infants Your ever Aff'." husb'! untill death — Signed — John Harrower. Adressed, To Mrs. John Harrower, Lerwick, Zetland. Tuesday, August i6th. Expecting a visit of one Mr Kennedy an Edinburgher, a Cooper now in Fredericksburgh, I this day sent to Toun for a Quart of the Best Vestindia Rum which cost me Eighteen pence Vir- ginia Currancy. Wednesday, ijth. This evening entred to school Thomas Brooks Mr Spotswoods^ carpenter in order to learn Writing and Arithmetick at nights and on Sundays.^ Freiday, igth. This day at noon Coll Will™ Daingerfield finished his wheat harvest by getting the last of it brought home and stacked. Sunday, 2ist. At home teaching Brooks. Nothing remarcable. Munday, 22d. This afternoon Col! Daingerfield begun to sow wheat again for the next years crope. They sow their wheat here in the field where there Indian Corn is growing and plough it into the ground, so that the Corn and wheat both Occopy the ground from this date untill Jan- uary next and then the Corn is cut down. Tuesday, 2jd. This day at noon was finished at one of Col! Dain- gerfields Barns a new Machine for beating out of wheat, it is a circle of 60 feet diameter in the center of which their is a paul [pole ?] fixed in the ground from which there goes three beams that reach the outer edge of the great circle and betwixt the outer ends of them are fixed four rollers, each roller having 320 spokes in it, they are 6 feet long, viz! the rollers, and goes round upon a floor of 3 Inch plank of 7 feet long from the outer edge of the great circle and round the outer ends of the floor plank there is a thin plank upon it's edge and round the inner edge the same which keeps in the wheat, the Machine is drawn round by 4 Horses and beats out 100 Bushels of wheat every day. It was begun i'.' instant. Sunday, 28th. At home all day teaching Brooks. Sunday, September nth. D? teaching Brooks, at i pm came M5 Ken- nedy from Fredericksburgh here to see me and after we had dined we ended the Quart of Rum I Bought 16'^ Last M°. Tuesday, October 4th. Went to Fredericksb.^ and seed a Horse Race for a Hundred Guineas, Gained by M' Fitchews Horse.' ' Presumably Alexander Spotswood of Nevport, afterward brigadier-general ; grand- son of the famous governor. '^ Mill's Diary shows, passim, how a Shetland minister of that day regarded the "Sabbath"; but it also shows that he could not induce all the islanders to observe it with the same strictness. 3 Sporting readers, if there are such among the votaries of history, will find the de- tails of these days' races, derived from the pages of the Virginia Gazette, in Mr. W. G. Stanard's article already referred to, on Racing in Colonial Virginia, Virginia Maga-