The Journals of Martha E. McMillan

Introduction “‘Thoughts vanish but writing is eternal.’” M.E.M. Transcribed from the flyleaf of the 1867 Journal On January 15, 1867, Martha Elizabeth Murdock McMillan of Cedarville, Ohio penned her first entry into a journal that she would maintain in multiple volumes until two weeks before her death in August 1913. Twenty-two year old Martha began her diary on the same day she married thirty-three year old James McMillan. In her journals, Martha depicts the realities of married life, farm work, and community responsibilities. She writes her plans and her disappointments. She documents the births of her ten children, and she transcribes her sorrow when she records three of their deaths. The journals reveal how Martha wove herself into the fabrics of both the Cedarville community and the Presbyterian churches in town. Martha’s writing also reveals her work and travels beyond Cedarville. Martha documents her lifelong interest and work in Sabbath Schools as well as her work in Ohio and Indiana on behalf of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. In her journals, Martha recorded the daily, the ordinary, and the mundane, as well as the sublime and the poetic. Her life writing signifies to future generations the value of the ordinary, unsung life of faith. In January 2015, one-hundred and forty-eight years after Martha McMillan began her journal, Cedarville University students in the American Women Writers course met Martha for the first time as they commenced an archival recovery project of Martha McMillan’s life writing. The eleven students in the class transcribed, analyzed, and historicized entries from the 1867, 1868, 1874, 1888, 1894, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1904, and 1913 journals. During the process, the class posed questions common to work with “life writing,” such as, “What is the value of recording the ordinary and the mundane?” and “What is the value of reading it, or making it available for others to read?” As the class members read and discussed the entries they were 6