A One-of-a-Kind Trove Reveals What 19th-Century American Boyhood Was Really Like

Writing in 1897, Ida Farr Nelson remembered the last decade of family life in rural Goshen, New Hampshire, with happiness. Her sons Elmer, Arthur, and Walter, who were close in age and great friends, had been a joy to her, and her younger son Ernest was “the darling pet and plaything of us all.”