Samuel Breck Biography
About Samuel Breck:
Birth And Background | Samuel Breck Moves To Sweetbriar | Politics, Religion And Business | Arts And Charity Work | Diary And Other WritingsDiary And Other Writings
Samuel Breck spent much time writing. The products of his pen are to be found in the Port Folio, the newspapers, and in a number of pamphlets. Our concern here is with his diary, only a part of which has been printed. That portion is his reminiscences of the past which fill many of the Diary’s pages and are not repeated here. These cover his earliest memories up to the year 1797 and, edited by H. E. Scudder, were published in 1877 as “Recollections of Samuel Breck With Passages From His Note-Books.”
Scudder refers to the Diary as “Note-Books.” Commenced in 1800, these books ran with time lapses, and, after 1840 with meager entries, falteringly into the 1850s. Not all the volumes have survived. The period 1800 to 1814 is briefly covered and certainly represents more of a note book, more of a commonplace book, than a diary. But from 1814 on Breck's notations are more in diary form, although J. Francis Fisher wrote: “They are generally less a record of events than observations on them and abstracts from his studies and various readings.”
Because of this, the Diary as it appears on this website has been pared down to a concentration on Breck’s comments on the local and nearby scene. Fearful late in life that his Diary might contain something that inadvertently could cause pain, he instructed his legatee to expunge such material. Whether such a censorship was actually exercised remains doubtful.
This installment of the Diary starts in 1814 during the War of 1812. Breck and his wife and their only child, seven-year-old Lucy, who was fated to die at the age of twenty-one, are at Sweetbriar, with the rest of his “family,” some seven or eight servants, living comfortably, as one could in that day, on an inherited income of little more than three thousand dollars.
Nicholas B. Wainwright of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania compiled this “About Samuel Breck” section and the subsequent diary entries that appear on this website. The Modern Club of Philadelphia wishes to thank the Historical Society for their cooperation.