The Diary of Caleb Gannet for the Year 1776

Among rich manuscript materials in Houghton Library, Harvard University, are three small volumes of minute and careful handwriting which comprise Diary of Caleb Gannet for years 1776 to 1782. Filled for most part with unimportant details concerning weather, preachers, and persons with whom he ate, slept or stabled his horse, diaries contain considerable information concerning current prices and in Diary for 1776 there are glimpses of political events and particularly of first celebration of American independence in Boston which are of more general interest. A sketch of life and character of diarist may be found in Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society for year 1819;1 and a miniature portrait of him and his wife, Ruth Stiles Gannet, may be seen in biography of their son Ezra Stiles Gannet, distinguished nineteenth century Unitarian.2 Caleb Gannet was born at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, August 22, 1745. He entered Harvard College at age of fourteen and after graduation in 1763 studied for Christian ministry under guidance of Rev. Ebenezer Gay, the father of American Unitarianism, at Hingham, Massachusetts. In 1768, he was ordained to minister to a congregation of New Englanders who had settled around old French Fort Beausej our at head of Bay of Fundy. Lack of financial support and denominational rivalry, however, led him to relinquish his charge in 1771. Two years later he was appointed tutor in mathematics and philosophy at Harvard College. In 1778 he became a Fellow of Corporation3 and in 1780 college steward, which office he held for thirty-eight years. One glance at closely written pages of Diaries is sufficient to confirm estimate of his contemporaries that Caleb was exact, not fluent. The records of many days are contained on a single small page. The little disbursements such as two

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