200 years ago, a 15 year old girl named Sylvia Lewis, daughter of Royce Lewis and Ruth Parmalee, started a diary in Connecticut. Her and her friends, like many young women today, decided that they would record the details of their lives. Little did Sylvia know, she would continue her diary for 20+ years. She would record her family's move from Connecticut to Ohio, her first years of marriage, the births and deaths of her children, and the daily happenings of women in frontier Ohio.
Sylvia Lewis (6 Jun 1785 - 18 Dec 1851) would eventually become Sylvia Tyler, after marrying Abel Tyler (1785 - 2 Jan 1853) in Trumbull County, Ohio. Sylvia gave birth to 7 children. All but one, Susan who died at the age of 2 days, lived into adulthood. Sylvia died in 1851 in Vienna, Trumbull, OH.
Sylvia is my maternal 5th great-grandmother and her diaries have opened by eyes to a world of struggles, migration, and joy. You can follow all the tales of Sylvia and my efforts to understand her better through this link of my posts on her: http://lessonsfrommyancestors.blogspot.com/search/label/Sylvia.