Ebenezer Gay, Jr's
Record of Deaths in his Parish.
1795-1814.
Ebenezer Gay, Jr. served as pastor of the first Congregational Church in Suffield Connecticut from 1796 to 1826. He kept a diary of the deaths in the community from 1795 to 1814. The original manuscript (currently stored at the Kent Memorial Library in Suffield) is difficult to read and in fragile condition.
A mimeographed copy of a typed transcription of the diary was purchased by the editor from Tuttle Antiquarian Books, in Rutland, Vermont, in 1997. Neither the librarian at the Kent Memorial Library nor the curator at the Suffield Historical Society were aware of the existance of a typed transcription of this diary. It is currently unknown who transcribed the original diary, but it is likely that a woman named Frances Edwards, who dealt with old books and manuscripts may have been the person.
The records in this book were copied from the typed transcription of the original document. Extreme care has been taken to reproduce the typed transcription as faithfully as possible. This allows the reader to make his or her own assumptions about missing information or misspelled words. The following items should be noted:
- All references to the transcription are in reference to the mimeographed copy of the typed transcription.
- Underlining is shown as it exists in the transcription.
- For readability, dates are shown in a bold face font and extra paragraph spacing has been added.
- The transcription uses superscript on the first few pages, then stops. The superscript is used in cases such as wh and ye, but is not used consistently. It appears that the author of the typed document grew weary of this added effort, because it is not used after page 5. For clarity, no superscript is used in this document other than that used to indicate footnotes.
- Line breaks are shown as they exist in the transcription, unless noted otherwise.
- Page breaks in the transcription are indicated by a dotted line over a centered page number.
- Misspellings have not been corrected unless noted.
- Character spacing between words in the transcription has been maintained in this document. However, where character space is missing in the transcription and two words are obviously intended to be separate, a space has been added.
- Hyphenation (however odd it may look) replicates that found in the transcription as closely as possible.
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