HISTORY NEBRASKA MANUSCRIPT FINDING AID
RG1634.AM: Albert W. Crandall, 1849-1939
Diaries: 1898-1939
Winnetoon and Niobrara, Knox County, Nebraska: County Sheriff and farmer
Size: 27 volumes on 4 reels of microfilm
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A.W. (Albert) Crandall was born in Bremen, Illinois, on December 14, 1849. He married Mary Ann Stokes on December 23, 1873. The Crandalls had nine children, two of whom died in infancy. The Crandall family arrived in Nebraska in October of 1884 and settled on a farm four miles southwest of Winnetoon. They moved to Niobrara in 1898, where A.W. Crandall served as county sheriff for four years. The family returned to the farm in 1902. From 1914 until his death on October 8, 1939, Crandall lived in the town of Winnetoon. At the time of his death, A.W. Crandall was Knox County’s oldest resident.
SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE
This collection consists of twenty-seven diaries dating from 1898-1939. Twenty-four of the diaries were kept by A.W. Crandall. The other three diaries were written by his wife, Mary.
The diaries relate to the lives led by the Crandall family in Knox County over a forty-year span. Beginning with intermittent entries from the early years, the A.W. Crandall diaries contain daily entries beginning in 1914. Typical entries comment on the weather, local and family news, farm tasks, money received and expended for produce and animals, personal expenses, elections, World War I news, recipes, and trips taken. Most of the diaries also include separate accounting records for the year.
The first volume was kept by Mary Crandall while her husband served as county sheriff. It includes a listing of prisoners committed to the county jail during 1898-1901. Mary would provide meals to the prisoners and collect payment from the County, based on the records she made in this volume. The other two Mary Crandall diaries, 1918 (Vol. 5) and 1929 and 1932 (Vol. 17), complement her husband’s volumes by providing a picture of her domestic chores.
Note: The original diaries are not in the History Nebraska collections. Only microfilm copies are available.
INVENTORY
Reel 1
Volume
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- Mary Crandall: 1898-1901, records of inmates fed; 1903-1930, accounts; 1925-1931, personal expenses
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- 1914; 1915-1920, Account records
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- 1917
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- 1918
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- Mary Crandall: 1918 [note: filming begins with the first entry at page 40]
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- 1919
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- 1920
Reel 2
Volume
-
- 1921
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- 1922
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- 1923
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- 1924
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- 1925
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- 1926
Reel 3
Volume
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- 1927
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- 1928
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- 1929
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- Mary Crandall: 1929, 1932 [note: pp. 370-373 and 376-387 are blank.]
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- 1930
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- 1931
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- 1932 [note: Oct. 14-15, 1932 were missed during the initial filming. Retakes of these entries are at the end of Reel 3.]
Reel 4
Volume
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- 1933
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- 1934
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- 1935
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- 1936
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- 1937
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- 1938
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- 1939
Subject headings:
Country life — Nebraska
Crandall, Albert W., 1849-1939
Crandall, Mary Ann Stokes
Knox County (Nebraska) — History
Niobrara (Nebraska) — History
Sheriffs — Nebraska
Winnetoon (Nebraska) — History
AIP/ksa/kfk 03-1995
Revised kfk 03-12-2004
Revised TMM 05-17-2007
Acc. 1995.0073; 1995.0074; 1995.0075; 1995.0076