Winslow, Anna Green

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WINSLOW, Anna Green

Born 29 November 1759, Nova Scotia, Canada; died 19 July 1780, Hingham, Massachusetts

Daughter of Joshua and Anna Green Winslow

Anna Green Winslow's father was commissary-general of the British forces in Nova Scotia. In 1770 she was sent to a finishing school in Boston, where she lived with her aunt and uncle, Sarah and John Deming. During her separation from her family, she kept a diary sporadically from November 1771 to May 1773. Her aunt apparently encouraged the effort as a penmanship exercise, but its chief function was to provide a running letter to her parents.

Much of the diary is a minute description of Winslow's daily routine. She summarizes sermons, details current fashions, tells jokes, and keeps her parents posted on family affairs. She mentions her fun at "dansing; danceing I mean," and asks to be allowed to dress in Boston styles: "I hope aunt wont let me wear the black hatt with the red Dominie—for the people will ask me what I have got to sell as I go along street if I do, or, how the folk at New guinie do? Dear mamma, you don't know the fation here—I beg to look like other folk." Winslow even admits to an occasional "egregious fit of laughterre" that caused her aunt to label her "whimsical."

But Boston life was not all fashion and frivolity; Winslow's "laughterre " was balanced by repeated descriptions of her industry at sewing, spinning, reading, and writing. The entry for 22 February 1772 is typical: "I have spun 30 knots of linning yarn, and (partly) new footed a pair of stockings for Lucinda, read a part of the pilgrim's progress, coppied part of my text journal…play'd some, tuck'd a great deal…laugh'd enough." Although most of Winslow's diary is preoccupied by such matters of social and domestic routine, the politics of pre-Revolutionary Boston occasionally attracted her attention. She notes, for example, that "Col[onel] Gridley…taught [her] the difference between [Whigs and Tories]," and she added some months later that the militia trained on Boston Common with drills that were "very prettyly perform'd."

In all these descriptions of the world around her, Winslow reveals herself as well. References to her homesickness remind us that Winslow was, in 1771, a girl of twelve who wished desperately to please her parents. As she candidly remarked on 17 November 1771, "I think I have been writing my own Praises this morning." Her homesickness may have been exacerbated by her concern at her father's neglect. The entry for 30 December 1771, for example, shows Winslow attempting to make light of a letter from her father to the Demings: "I am told my Papa has not mention'd me in this Letter. Out of sight, out of mind."

Winslow was reunited with her family in 1773 when Joshua Winslow moved them to Marshfield, Massachusetts. In 1775 he was exiled as a Tory; his family, including Winslow, remained behind. Before the end of the Revolution, Winslow died of tuberculosis in Hingham, Massachusetts. Despite her early death, her childhood diary remains an appealing document in the social history of colonial Boston.