#JamesBarryDiary 26/7/1873 An extremely warm day and very windy. Alexander Gunn cut the balance of my hay. The big girl went home in the wagon, Gunn’s horse. The rest of the folks went to the Four Mile Brook with the wagon and the big girl walked home from that and so she might.

#JamesBarryDiary 25/7/1873 A beautiful day. I was sawing a shingles and edging some. The big girl came down last night and here all day. Alex'r Gunn jr to a job of cutting and putting in my hay for $2.25 and he cut it all, nearly. Since dinner time I paid him his fees, of course.

#JamesBarryDiary 25/7/1873 A beautiful day. I was sawing a shingles and edging some. The big girl came down last night and here all day. Alex'r Gunn jr to a job of cutting and putting in my hay for $2.25 and he cut it all, nearly. Since dinner time I paid him his fees, of course.

#JamesBarryDiary transcribed 1000s of fiddle tunes, most taken (some "improved") from published mid-19th-century music books, But as we see here, there were some he'd heard local fiddlers play, and some he'd written himself.

An #introduction: I am a historian of rural #NovaScotia in the #colonial era. I work at #Brock University in St Catharines Ontario Canada where I teach colonial #Canada, colonial Atlantic World, and #digital public history of Acadie/Mi'kma'ki/Nova Scotia. I encourage students to think historically using digital tools. My larger current work is a biography of the 19th-century NS miller #JamesBarryDiary. A miller, fiddler, printer, reader, and complainer of many ailments, writing on Barry finds me dabbling in histories of emotion, the body, religion, family, music, books, and print culture.

#histodons #history #ruralhistory #modernity