1849 Journal of Algernon Hilton - Introduction

I grew up with parents who loved genealogy and history.  My dad was an electrician in Alexandria, Louisiana, and back in the 1960's while he was working in the attic of a customer, that gentleman showed him a handwritten journal that he had found in that very same attic of that house.  The problem was that the journal was written in a strange phonetic language that the finder of the journal could not read or understand.  I'm not sure how it all came about, but in the end, my parents were allowed to borrow the journal and my mother lovingly and painstakingly deciphered and typed the journal and put it into a nice book form.  The original went back to the finder of the journal, but I have in my possession the typewritten book my mother made.  Since I first began typing this introduction, I found xeroxed copies of the original journal among my mother's things, and I can now really appreciate what a laborious undertaking this really was!

The writer of the journal was a man named Algernon Hilton, and because so many of my early years were spent with my mother's work on the journal, Algernon Hilton felt like part of the family.  My sisters and I knew where Algernon was buried and visited him.  We knew where he had lived and went past his house.  Based on the date of a cover page my mother wrote, I believe her work was finished in 1970, when I would have been 12 years old.  That means the work was ongoing when I was younger than that, and my sisters were even younger.  I mention that as a preface to the fact that none of us ever read this journal at the time!  I don't know why, too young to read an adult book of so many words, I suppose.  Since my mother passed away, the book is now in my possession, and I have read it for the first time.  I now find it a fascinating historical look into the family of a man in the early years of my hometown, Alexandria, Louisiana.  It needs to be shared!

The book that my mother wrote includes a preface that also included Algernon Hilton's obituary in March, 1909; a glossary of some of the phonetic words used in the journal that were difficult to decipher; an index of the names and places mentioned in the journal; a diary from June 1849 through December 1849; expense records from January 1847 through February 1850; a short combined diary and expense record from June 1844 through January 1846; and many pages of prose and poetry, a few of which are identified by the author, most of which are not, but I have no way of knowing if Mr. Hilton wrote the ones that are not identified.

In this blog, I plan to copy the diary and a few other pages of the journal that may be of historical or genealogical interest or significance, beginning with the next post:

1849 Journal of Algernon Hilton - Obituary and Preface