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c 6 C A World Expanded Outside of her diaries and a few primary sources, Emilie Frances Davis is an invisible woman. Unfortunately she came of age during a time when the lives of women and black people were not seen as important enough to be recorded or remembered. If it were not for her diaries—her unconscious act of defiance against social erasure—her life today would have gone unnoticed. She was not the one on the stage giving speeches. She never wrote editorials for the newspaper or received any major awards. On the surface she was like thousands of women who moved through life without leaving anything of public value that ensured that their lives would be remembered. If one were researching any other time in history, her diaries may not be so significant and important; but, the fact that she wrote during a time when the nation was in the midst of an internal war, and at a time when the majority of people who looked like her could neither read nor write, makes her dailiness far from ordinary. From the material recorded in Emilie’s pocket diaries, we see that, for a single free black woman, the line between her public life and her private life was permeable. Emilie had some control over her own time, as evidenced by her work as both a short-term live-in domestic and a modiste. Her jobs did not dictate her time; she did. There were periods of time—anywhere from several days to several weeks at a time—when Emilie did not work and would spend the days shopping and visiting with friends. Other times she would work with families, cleaning their homes and taking care of their children. It was during the summers, when she worked as a live-in domestic outside of the city, that she seems to have earned quite a bit of money. She sent money home to both Elijah J. and Nellie to take care of family matters. “To day has bin a very stormy, dreary day. The rains was very heavy. I sent some money down for Nellie to disperse.”1 Leaving the city during the summer was very common among the free black elite community, as elites would often cancel all summer activities and travel to Cape May or Atlantic City from June to September.2 Even though Emilie was not going on vacation, she still found a way to participate in this elite activity of leaving the city. In April 1864 she traveled to Germantown to accept a situation with the Wister family. This was possibly a new family for her as she did not mention them before she took the job. “Lovely day I went out to Germantown to Mrs. Wister and 160 A World Expanded engaged to go to her the first of June.” Dr. Owen J. and Sarah Butler Wister were most likely the descendants of merchant John Wister, who made his fortune before the Civil War and was a part of Philadelphia’s elite community. Dr. Wister worked in Germantown and in Philadelphia. On May 4 Sarah followed up, checking to confirm that Emilie was still planning to come, “Mrs. Wister called to see Mrs. Powell to day. I have promised to go out on the 7th of June.” Since the Powell family was one of the families that Emilie worked with on a daily basis, they may have recommended Emilie for the job.3 When she finally arrived for work, she found Germantown to be “very pleasant ”—unlike the year before, when she had worked with the Harris family in Harrisburg and she regularly complained about having to stay and about how much she missed her family. She seemed to be under incredible stress during that time: her father was planning to move, Mary was very sick, and Alfred was reluctant to enter into the military. “Mrs. Harris wants me to stay another week,” Emilie noted after three months of work. “She has heard from Tawny, she wont be home for seven months.” Two days later Emilie finally wrote, “I bid my dear friends farwell last night. I hav bin busy getting ready to go home, sent my things to day.”4 Despite the fact that she had the prospect of longer employment, Emilie preferred instead to return home. This year, though, Emilie seems to have enjoyed her time with the Wisters, taking care of their home and their son, Owen, and she was looking...

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