In the year 1770, a bright little 10-year-old girl, Anna Green Winslow, was sent from her home in Nova Scotia to Boston, the birthplace of her parents, to be "finished" at Boston schools by Boston teachers. For a few years following her arrival in Boston, Anna kept a diary in which she recorded the daily events in her life. She was a sensitive and intelligent girl and her comments offer a vivid view of the life of a preadolescent girl in colonial Boston.
The entry below from her diary dated February 9, 1772, written when she was 12 years old, describes her problems with a whitlow and multiple boils. Her spelling has been retained.
Feb. 9th [1772]—My honored Mamma will be so good as to excuse my useing the pen of my old friend just here, because I am disabled by a whitloe on my fourth finger & something like one on my middle finger, from using my own pen; but altho' my right hand is in bondage, my left is free; & my aunt says, it will be a nice oppertunity if I do but improve it, to perfect myself in learning to spin flax. I am pleased with the proposal & am at this present, exerting myself for this purpose. I hope, when two, or at most three months are past, to give you occular demonstration of my proficiency in this art, as well as several others. My fingers are not the only part of me that has suffer'd with sores within this fortnight, for I have had an ugly great boil upon my right hip & about a dozen small ones—I am at present swath'd hip & thigh, as Samson smote the Philistines, but my soreness is near over.
EBV-related mediastinal mass in a healthy preadolescent girl