Diaries

The secret diary of the wealthy Virginia plantation owner and enslaver William Byrd II is filled with rich descriptions of his dreams and those of others in his household. Byrd regularly noted striking omens in his dreams: a flaming star, lightning, a flaming sword, and a coffin thrown into his home. He dreamed about the illnesses and deaths of specific people, sometimes just before they passed. Once he wrote that an “Indian woman,” likely an enslaved Indigenous woman, had died “according to a dream I had last night.”⁸

Byrd believed that “sometimes dreams have been true.”⁹ A religious man, Byrd participated in the longstanding Christian tradition of analyzing dreams as portents of God’s intentions. The dreams he recorded always suggested a bleak future of death, disease, and danger.

He also recorded the dreams of others. He once noted his wife’s dream of a scroll in the sky that foretold drought, famine, and pestilence. In 1710, he recorded the dream of a neighbor named Mrs. Burwell about “a person that with money scales weighed time and declared that there was no more than 18 pennies worth of time to come,” which Byrd interpreted to signify something either about “the world or a sick person.” His analysis of the dream suggested it might foretell the prophesied return of Jesus Christ to the earth. But it turned out a few days later that his neighbor died, Byrd wrote, “according to Mrs. Burwell’s dream exactly.” He seemed to have forgotten his grander premonitions.¹⁰

Have you ever been mad at someone for something they did in a dream? While the young New Jersey schoolmaster Philip Fithian worked for a year in Virginia, his diary contained numerous references to the woman he loved, Elizabeth Beatty, whom he called “Laura.” He wrote tender letters to her, and often noted his sadness at being separated.

But on March 19, his diary recorded, “Last night I dreamed much of the Girl, which, I most of all others, esteem, & admire; of Laura; But oh! I dreamed She was treacherous!” His language is oblique, but he likely meant that she had betrayed him with another man. A separation of hundreds of miles must have been causing him some anxiety about her faithfulness. Fithian worried that the dream might not only be a symptom of his own worries, but also a possible reflection of reality. He wrote, “If it be true,” he would have to admit the truth of the Roman poet Virgil’s phrase “Varium et mutabile semper Femina,” which translates roughly to woman is fickle and ever-changing.

Recovering himself briefly from the “weakness” of “writing in this manner,” Fithian reminded himself that “Dreams indeed are vain & false.” Yet unable to hold back, he added “But perhaps Laura may think that Lovers vows are vain & trifling” as dreams. All his worried dreams proved unnecessary. Philip Fithian married Elizabeth Beatty shortly after he left Virginia and returned to New Jersey.¹¹

Like William Byrd II, Landon Carter was a member of Virginia’s gentry class, which built its wealth through the exploitation of enslaved peoples’ labor to plant and harvest tobacco. And like Byrd, he kept an extraordinarily detailed diary for many years. Among many other things, it documents Carter’s attempts to use violence to control the people he enslaved.¹²

On June 26, 1776, just days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, eight enslaved people escaped Carter’s plantation. He believed that a man named Moses was leading them to seek freedom with the British army. Carter’s diary soon noted reports that some had been killed by pursuers. An unreliable source (Carter called him an “egregious liar”) claimed to have seen Moses and reported that he was remorseful, claiming “Dunmore had deceived all the Poor Slaves,” and he would “return to his master” if he could. Whatever weight Carter placed upon this account, it clearly weighed on his mind.¹³

Carter kept inquiring about these enslaved people, and they continued to resurface in his diary. On July 25, Carter had “A strange dream . . . about these runaway people.” He dreamed that a “wretchedly meager and wan” self-emancipated Black man awakened me and told me of the self-emancipated peoples’ “great sorrow.” They had been hurt by militiamen and hidden in a cave. They asked to be “pardoned” if they returned, rather than being hanged for self-emancipating.¹⁴

When he awoke, Carter was astonished. Perhaps he had never before considered the plight of self-emancipated people in such a vivid, empathetic way. He wrote “I cant conceive how this dream came into my brain sleeping, and I dont remember to have collected so much of a dream as I have done of this these many years.” To add to his surprise, Carter also wrote that his daughter Judy “dreamt much of them too last night.” He concluded, “I am just weak enough to fancy we shall soon hear ab[ou]t them.” He continued to seek word from them, and think about them, until he died two years later.¹⁵

In 1773, forced by financial need, John Harrower left his family in Scotland. He became an indentured servant in Virginia, working as a schoolmaster. He kept a diary during this time, which is filled with yearning for his lost home. In January 1774, he recorded a poem that began, “My absent friends God bless, and those, / my wife and Children dear; / I pray for pardon to my foes, / And for them sheds a tear.” A few months later, another piece of sentimental verse lamented “that I am from my sweet wife separated / And Oblidged to leave my Infant Children Fatherless."¹⁶

His diary includes a copy of several warm letters written to his wife. Her first name is unknown—partly because he addressed her with pet names like “my Dearest Jewell.” He asked her to write her next letter on the largest piece of paper she could find, and “leave no waste room in it,” since “whatever comes from your hand must be agreeable.” He begged her to come to Virginia as soon as possible. She teased him about his “getting a Virginian Lady,” but he assured her he would “leave that Jobb for you.” He hoped to soon make her “a Virginian Lady among the woods of America.”¹⁷

On December 20, 1774, he wrote the following diary entry: “last night I dreamt that my wife came to me here, and told me she had sent Johnnie and Bettie to Deall to stay and left George in the house with M.J. the servant.” He dreamed not only of reuniting with his wife, but doing so without his children. This dream was unfulfilled. In September 1775, he reported being “uneasy” at her report that she was “so tender this spring.” She seems to have been too ill to make the passage to Virginia, and appears to have died in Scotland.¹⁸