William Clayton's Journal

William ClaytonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 631K words
Chapters: 64

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.William Clayton's Journal by William ClaytonAuthor: Clayton, William, 1814-1879,Language: English, Class: F786: United States local history: New Southwest. Colorado River, Canyon, and Valley, Release Date: Mar 2, 2014

Editor's review

This diary is a valuable personal record of nineteenth-century American westward expansion and migration. From the perspective of a participant, William Clayton records day by day the progress of the journey, camp life, weather and provisions, as well as the cooperation and friction among his companions; the prose is plain but dense with information. Its value lies not in literary polish but in the immediacy of the historical record: readers can see how ordinary people organized daily life, coped with uncertainty, and maintained community order during a long migration. As a public-domain electronic text, it is suitable as a primary source for the study of the local history, migration history, and everyday history of the American Midwest and Southwest, and also for readers interested in diary literature and pioneer narratives. It is best read as a historical source rather than a storybook, with maps and a background chronology at hand, paying attention to dates, places, names, and recurring details of daily life. The table of contents and notes may be limited, so readers must trace the threads themselves.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Historians studying American westward expansion and migration
Local and everyday history researchers needing primary diary sources
Readers interested in records of ordinary life in nineteenth-century America
Readers accustomed to raw documents who are willing to organize the threads themselves

Not a good fit for

General fiction readers expecting a complete plot and character development
Beginners who need modern annotations and a detailed introduction
Readers who prefer light, quick reading

Reading tips

Look up the author's biography and the background of the migration before starting the diary to lower the barrier to understanding.
Prepare maps and a chronology, and mark recurring place names, personal names, and journey milestones as you read.
Read in chronological segments, and after each segment summarize the day's key points in two or three sentences for easy reference.
Treat the diary as a sourcebook of excerpts; for details of daily life and provisions, set up a separate note index.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this diary suitable for reading directly as a general history?

Not really. It is a personal day-by-day record lacking systematic narrative and background explanation, and readers must supply the causal links between events themselves. Read as a general history, it is easy to see only scattered daily details without grasping the overall thread. A better approach is to read a relevant historical overview first and then use the diary as corroborating and supplementary material.

How difficult is the English original for non-native readers?

The text is a nineteenth-century English diary, with sentence patterns and vocabulary bearing the marks of its time, but it is overall an everyday record that does not aim at rhetorical polish. Non-native readers with basic reading ability can make progress with a dictionary and background materials; the main difficulties lie in old-style spelling, place and personal names, and the gaps in context caused by the lack of annotations, which require patience to verify.

How can the lack of annotations and an introduction in the electronic edition be compensated for?

You can build your own supporting materials: first find encyclopedia entries on the author and the relevant migration route, then prepare a map and a chronology of major events; while reading, list unfamiliar names and places separately and verify them. This takes extra time, but it can string the scattered diary entries into a comprehensible route, making reading more efficient.

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About the author

William Clayton Author · English · 1814–1879

William Clayton (1814–1879) was an English-born Mormon pioneer who left important written records of the early Saints' migrations and settlement. The library holds one work by him, William Clayton's Journal, which offers a first-hand source for understanding the nineteenth-century Mormon movement. He is also known as the author of the hymn "Come, Come, Ye Saints," which has been widely sung within the faith. Public information on his education, specific offices, and biographical details is limited, so they are not elaborated here; his writing, chiefly in diary form, is notable for its factual record and sense of immediacy, combining historical value with personal testimony.