Category: Journal Entries

Entries from January 1817, Volume H

Like many Federalist gentlemen with close ties to Harvard, Gallison was a committed Unitarian.  The “Mr Channing” he mentions was the Rev. Mr William Ellery Channing, the famed Unitarian minister of what is now the Arlington Street Church in Boston.   He had arrived at Channing’s church, then on Federal Street, as a young man too reserved to approach the great minister for some months.  By the end of his short life, however, Gallison was close enough to Channing that he earned a lengthy and affectionate obituary.

Channing Memoir_of_John_Gallison_Esq_

By 1817, Gallison devoted more and more of his journal to reporting and meditation on Channing’s sermons and other religious matter.  He had always used it as something of a commonplace book for self-improvement, devoting half of each volume to personal study even after he decided it might also be useful to record events of his daily life.  The main difference, as time went on, is that religion and his spiritual life replaced philosophy, history, and mathematics as subject matter.

Exhibit II

Aunt Scott, was, as noted earlier, the widow of Governor John Hancock. Already aware of the mismanagement of her affairs by her second husband and his associates, she was beginning the process of adjusting her balance sheet and daily expenses.

His comment on Mrs. Greenwood brings to a close one of the longest sub-plots of his journal– the steady decline of her manic-depressive husband. Anyone with an interest in medicine or social attitudes toward mental illness in this period may find the following excerpts useful:

Greenwood excerpts, Volumes D-H