Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

The original diary of Ruth Douglass was recently transcribed and annotated by Robert L. Root, Jr., a professor at Central Michigan University.

The diary shows a year in the life of Ruth Douglass, a 23 year old who had recently married Columbus C. Douglass, a geological explorer. I have chosen to focus on the months Ruth and her husband spent on Isle Royale. He had been hired to supervise a copper mining operation on the island. Ruth Douglass died two years after completing this diary due to complications during childbirth. There are no photographs of Ruth available. The following entries are as they appeared in the diaries, no changes have been made.

Courtesy of National Park Service

April 18, 1848

We were awakened this morning by the peltings of a violent storm against the windows. The wind blew furiously from the north-east accompanied with hail and snow. The appearence of the lake was truly frightful-the waves rolled and dashed madly over the high piers, sweeping away much valuable property.

August 1, 1848

When Mr. Douglass came up to tea, he said he had received a letter from the Ohio and Isle Royale Mining Co with the proposition to go to Isle Royale Lake Superior to est smelting works, and Ruth will you go with me? I replied. Oui Monsieur he then remarked that although he had led something of a back woods life, and was ready to go to almost any place, but the idea of being banished to a desolate island was something that had not entered his head.

September 8, 1848

Our boat strolled about the island for some time at length we found berries of different varieties, Whortleberries, mulberries, wildpears and cherries and a few red Raspberries, clambered up some very high pretty stones. In attempting to step from one point of rock to another my foot slipped and I fell into the water, this was my first bath in Lake Superior.

October 4, 1848

The weather being pleasant and the waters of the Bay so quiet that Mrs. Mathews and myself ventured out in a boat alone with a half breed woman, she managed the boat just as well as a man.

Courtesy of National Park Service

Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

November 20, 1848

We passed through a beautiful grove of evergreen trees consisting of cedar, spruce and fir standing very thick and having tall straight bodies with cone like tops, forming so thick a mass, that the sun is unable to penetrate the Earth through them.

December 30, 1848

Four months have now elapsed since our arrival on this island, which one might have supposed would have seemed long, but on the contrary they have glided awasy almost imperceptibly, and how as the year draws to a close, we have to look back and reflect upon the fleetness of time, with its many changes, and that every rolling year adds another to our age, and draws us higher to enternity, and we might well say with the poet.