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About Young American Woman Living in the Philippines

About the author: The author is unknown, except for some details: she was a niece of Henry Clay Ide, and stayed with her cousins Annie and Marjorie Ide in Manila. Hence the diary and its author are identified as “Diary by a young woman living in the Philippines, 1905.” At the time the diary was written, Henry Ide was Vice Governor-General of the Philippines.

About the diary: Held in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library University of Pennsylvania, and made available on the University of Pennsylvania OPENN website where the diary was uploaded as a digitized document: Diary by a young American woman living in the Philippines, 1905.

It has the following description:

Bound volume from 21 March to 19 September 1905 of observations and social activities of a young woman… The diary begins “Off to China” detailing her journey with her sister Katie from Manila to Hong Kong, Canton, and Amoy. She describes the streets, the people, customs, and temples and provides anecdotal historical information. She returns to the Philippines on 30 March, relaying the daily activities of Marjorie, Annie, and herself, including dinners with other families living in Manila and working on the Philippines Commission with Dean C. Worcester, Luke E. Wright, and a host of others. The Ide cousins, Annie and Marjorie, and the diarist, play tennis, go swimming, attend dances and dinners, and go riding. There is a mention of buying a gift for Alice Roosevelt’s party. In addition, the diarist describes a trip to Dagupan in Luzon, Philippines, where she describes the landscape, daily journeys, the Igorot, panning for gold, and an earthquake. There are some personal notes about missing her family and the wedding of her sister Fan, as well as letters from home.

The diary has been made available by the University of Pennsylvania in the public domain without restrictions, under a Creative Commons Attribution License.  The Philippine Diary Project is grateful to Vince Rafael for suggesting inclusion of this diary. The diary’s pages were posted in From the Page, as Diary by a young American woman living in the Philippines, 1905. The transcriptions there were used as the basis for the entries here.

The Philippine Diary Project makes use only of the Philippine portion of this diary, starting Thursday, March 30, 1905.