The picture above is of one of the two small leatherbound volumes that comprise my great-grandmother's Grand Tour travel diary. She sailed from New York in July of 1900, three weeks after her 25th birthday. She was accompanied as far as Paris by her sister Pattie, then 31, and after that by her brother George, then 29. Pattie was a member of the first graduating class of Bryn Mawr college, and would go on to become a suffragist and a state legislator. Anna didn't go on to college; the tour may have been considered her college education. That might help to explain the comprehensive nature of the journals -- they are, in my dad's words, "written in a careful hand and artfully embellished with tickets, hotel emblems, calling cards, and pressed flowers." Not long after her return to her hometown of Whitford, Pennsylvania, Anna married Lardner Howell, my great-grandfather, described by my granddad as a "triple-jointed ball of fire," and "a howling swell from Philadelphia." Evidently, her grand tour only whetted Anna's thirst for adventure. Each month of Anna's travel journal is transcribed below.
Please understand that Anna's journals are copyrighted, and may not be reproduced in any form without explicit written permission.
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