Professor Emeritus Publishes Biographical Text on Life in the 1850s

C. Stewart Doty, UMaine professor emeritus of history, recently published The Journal of Ann McMath: An Orphan in a New York Parsonage in the 1850s, a 256-page text expected to be of particular interest to historians, genealogists and anyone interested in the lives of ordinary people during the nineteenth century. Doty, coauthor of at least two other historical texts and numerous journal articles, includes in the book excerpts from the diary of 17-year-old orphan Ann McMath (1834–1873), who was sent to live with her uncle and his family in their parsonage in Horseheads, N.Y. The diary “offers a rare glimpse of life in the 1850s as it was lived by ordinary women, told in the authentic voice of a young woman coming of age in the Burned-Over District of Western New York,” according to publishers at SUNY Press.