Even today there is a pronounced tendency for historians to focus on momentous events and elite figures. This, of course, is quite understandable. Not only do we have better documentation about leaders and signal events, but such persons and occurrences have a larger impact on historical developments. Nonetheless, this focus tends to obscure how ordinary persons lived and how they observed their times. In order to fully understand the past it is crucial to recapture the facts, activities, and feelings of more ordinary individuals. It is in this spirit that I wish to share with you some observations based on the diary of Cornelia Robinson for the years 1864–1865. At the time these diaries were written Cornelia was 38 years old and unmarried. She lived with her father, a lawyer, in New Haven, Connecticut. New Haven at that time had approximately 38,000 inhabitants. Cornelia’s mother had died only a year earlier and she functioned as a kind of housekeeper for her father. One brother (Arthur) was starting in business, while the other (Ernest) was a student at Yale. During the two years of these diaries, Cornelia suffered repeated bouts of poor health.

The diaries are rich in detail and, like many personal accounts, give a great deal of attention to commonplace events. There are, for example, frequent comments about the weather. Another Busy Morning paints a clear picture of daily life in New England during the Civil War, and details this young woman's household activities, travels, reaction to the Civil War and other public events, and lastly, the consistent issue of Cornelia Robinson’s chronic poor health.