The Civil War Pocket Diaries of Emilie Frances Davis

The experiences of free black women in antebellum Philadelphia are both complicated and multilayered. Lifestyles, incomes, and church and club memberships were often connected to and determined by their skin color, their familial ties, and their income levels. A mulatto woman in free black Philadelphia who was both literate, connected, and employed wielded a great amount of cultural capital and had control over her time and her mobility. Emilie Frances Davis as a literate mulatto seamstress was part of a small subset of women who had multiple access points to privilege: through her skin color; her ability to read, write, and cipher; her family; and her talent and skill as a trained seamstress. During her time, her life was probably more ordinary than extraordinary, as she was neither a journalist nor a poet, and she did not speak to diverse audiences or write books. As far as we know, she was an “everyday” woman. At the same time, from 1863-1865, Emilie recorded more than thirty thousand words in her three pocket diaries.  Because her pocket diaries—her conscious acts of identity assertion—have survived, she is now considered to be “extraordinary,” “special,” and “unusual.”

My paper uses Emilie Davis’s Civil War pocket diaries as a guide to reconstruct her life and her experiences as a free black woman and examine her mobility. By placing her words alongside other primary sources (maps, school and church records, archival newspapers, and photographs) that collaborate, correct, and in some cases contradict her story, her life becomes a lens through which one can better understand the impact that the Civil War had on the free black Philadelphia community. Although she may have been ordinary, the process of using her life as a map and her diary entries as clues makes her life and her experiences extraordinary.