Guide to the Adeline Cleveland Hosner Papers,
1833-1882

Adeline Cleveland Hosner (1809-1882) was the sixth of twelve children born to Josiah Cleveland and Fanny Lathrop. She lived in Mecklenburg, Tompkins County, the entirety of her adult life. At a Methodist revival camp-meeting in 1824, Adeline, then fifteen years old, with a brother and a sister experienced religious conversion. She married Isaac Hosner in 1833 at age twenty-four, bore eleven children, seven of which survived to be adults. Her concern for the physical and spiritual welfare of her family vas paramount through successive trials of sickness, death and personal conflicts. She wrote of raising the money to buy her sons' drafts in the Civil War over slavery, constantly concerned herself with the irreligious state of her husband's soul, and shoved a profound sense of responsibility for her own moral and spiritual self. She quoted the Bible and sermons she heard often and wrote poetry as veil, reflecting on her life as a Christian woman. The first entry in her diary is in March 1833, and the last is dated August 7, 1882.

Diaries and accounts of a markedly religious woman in Mecklenburg, Schuyler County, New York; she describes her concern with the irreligious soul of her husband and the spiritual well-being of her family, buys the drafts of her sons in the Civil War, and otherwise reflects on her life as a Christian woman. Also, grocery and household accounts. Includes typed transcript of diary.