Pandemic - Living History - AGAIN!

To hold in my hand, the actual diary of Ann Whitall, written in the 1760's was an honor and made an indelible impression on me that has grown over the days since the day I held that book.  
I had gotten to know Ann Whitall a little from transcribing her diary from a typed copy onto the computer so people could read it.
I think it is easily misunderstood.
Having studied diaries for decades, and having kept my own for over 50 years, I have thought a lot about their purposes.  Diaries from long dead days bring it back to the personal experience.  
Ann Whitall was a woman who sought a spiritual life, as she had always been taught that she should.  But marriage, motherhood, and the strains of everyday life put a great strain on that goal.  On top of it all, a spiritual, deeply religious woman practicing a religion devoted to PEACE, had a revolution drop, literally, into her backyard.  
How hard must that have been for her?  She, too, in many ways was isolated.  Her deep need for a proper spiritual path put her into chafing conflicts on a daily basis.  Once, on a field trip, I held her marriage page in my hand, from a Quaker log book of such events. How much joy and hope she must have felt at the outset of her long journey through life.  She must have been shyly in love, totally innocent of any information regarding sexuality or reproduction, and she had eight children!  Taking a year for each pregnancy and birth and a year suckling, thats sixteen long years of maternity.
Then, when things are prosperous, calm, and the children beyond all their deadly diseases such as measles and chicken pox, scarlet fever, cholera, diphtheria, typhus, small pox, a revolution is sparked.
Soon, the fields of South Jersey are burning, the farms looted, the cattle and horses commandeered, the chickens slaughtered, the bedding shredded and everything glass shattered.  The women are alone on the farms, the husbands are off in the militia, only the elderly remain to shoulder the load.  
Ann's diaries, the ones we have, were written in the decade before the revolution, before she had any idea that such a thing would happen to her.  In one she mentions briefly how sad about "the Indians killing the people" and she has no idea that soon there will be killing in her apple orchard, a whole enormous battle with cannon, and foreign soldiers!
I feel for Ann Whitall, and I think of her.  Her memory lives on because her diaries were saved, through all these years from 1762 to 2020, through all the fires and the looting and the blood and death, those little diaries were kept safe, and Ann Whitall speaks to us from before our time.
Meanwhile, on television, protestors march on the capitol, in all of the major cities, and soldiers fire tear gas and rubber bullets into them.  It makes me think of so many old protest songs such as "Which side are you on?" and newer songs like "The Universal Soldier" and it makes me ask myself that question.  I answer that I am on the side of peace, and I think of Ann Whitall, who was also on the side of peace in times of turmoil.