M & S Rare Books

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The diaries have two days per page, and forms for monthly accounts and memoranda at end. The entries are in pencil, rather faint in places, but legible. Notes for some days are very brief and some days are skipped altogether. The second diary is fairly brief.

The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in 1817 to send free African-Americans to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States. In 1822, the society established on the west coast of Africa a colony that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, the society had sent more than 13,000 emigrants.

After the Civil War, when many blacks wanted to go to Liberia, financial support for colonization had waned. During its later years the society focussed on educational and missionary efforts in Liberia rather than emigration.

Adelia Hall's mission in 1870 is consistent with this evangelical, rather than political, emphasis, but the dairy is more a record of quotidian occurrences rather than a detailed narrative of the trip.

Hall does not seem to have relished her African sojourn. Quite a few of the entries mention only very prosaic events, like her husband catching a fish, and others complain of the conduct and drinking of her fellows, not to mention complaints about the climate and "barbarous natives" (Mar 14th); she claims that these same natives have never seen a white woman before, and (March 23) describes being surrounded by 500-1000 of them. As such, it is a portrait of the experience of one missionary, divested of the pieties and platitudes that are common to missionary narratives intended for public consumption. Her tone is not impious, but it lacks the religious fervour or flourishes one might expect. Throughout, she complains of illness, and often stays on the ship, while her husband goes ashore. Beyond these complaints, here principal concern is to document the comings and goings of her colleagues

The second diary has one page per day, and forms for monthly accounts and memoranda in places. The entries are in pencil. It continues the travels of Adelia Hall, though it does not take her back to Africa. At the time Liberia was in a state of considerable turmoil because of general unrest concerning a ruinously expensive loan contracted by the government with England, and the constitutional legitimacy of this government. This diary for 1871 takes Ms. Hall to the Caribbean and back to Philadelphia, but the entries are not as detailed as in the diary for 1870, and the entries cease in June, upon her return to the United States. The entries do offer some ongoing insight into Ms. Hall’s mental and physical state, which does not seem to find the Caribbean any more congenial than she did Africa.