#primary sources

By the King. REVEREND Fader in God, right trusty and right welbeloved we grete you wel. And for asmoch as we have ordeined oure trusty and welbeloved knight Sir Thomas Stanley, countrollour of oure householde, to have the keping of Alianore Cobham late called Duchesse of Gloucestr, and, accompanied with certain personnes of our householde, to lede hir into the parties of Chesshire , where as she shal abide, We wol and charge you that under oure Seel , being in youre warde, ye do make oure Writtes and Commissions in deue fourme, as many and such as the cas shal require, for the Shirefs of the shires that she shal passe thourgh, and for other personnes of the same shire, as many as shal be thought necessary, to be awayting and assisting unto the conducting of hir; and that ye charge them that shal lede hir forth, that thei lette not, for sekenesse or ony dissimulacion of hir, to carie hir thedir as we have appointed. And that ye faille not herof as we truste you. Yeven under our Signet at our manoir of Shene the xix. day of Januer.

Interviewer: You wanna introduce this, before we kick you guys out of here? Ray: Mikey [inaudible] Interviewer: Mikey does not wanna talk. He just wants to tousle his hair. [everybody laughs] Interviewer: Hair tousler.

Ray: We thought we were in Oasis for a little while... 'cause things got pretty heated one night over something really ridiculous. I think it was like, him [Mikey] being late for practice or something. Gerard: Yeah he was really late and I was like - yeah I was just really angry and I said just, a lot of stuff. Interviewer, jokingly: You can't do this to me! Gerard: Um, but me and Mikey fight, I guess, once every three years. So getting that out of the way was really good 'cause now we probably won't have another fight until way after-- Interviewer: Until you're on tour. Gerard: Yeah, until we're on tour. Mikey, overlapping in the background: That's right. Interviewer: On stage or something. Ray, amused: [Personal?] time. Gerard: But we get along great otherwise like, um, we um have all the same friends, I mean, we're into the same stuff. It's just awesome.

"You ever tried crack? [...] I used to smoke crack with a tour manager of ours."

I don't wanna be like "Brian." just because he's the tour manager of theirs that I know best, but like. It's Brian. It's definitely Brian. I'd already wondered this about him before and this is confirmation of my beliefs as far as I'm concerned.

And honestly you'd need crack to keep up with 2002 Bert and 2002 Gerard, let's be real.

She Called Herself "the Lone Old Woman." We Finally Know Her Name.

For years, one of the diaries in the Newberry’s collections sat without an author. The cover notation described it simply as “1880 Diary of a woman from San Jose, Ill., purchased at Greenview 1988.” Inside, her handwriting was careful, her voice vivid — and her identity a mystery.

Then two volunteers, working independently and unknown to each other, cracked it at the same time.

Emily La Framboise and Sheila Carter-Hart both contacted us in April with the same answer: the woman in the diary is Sarah B. Withers of Bloomington, Illinois — widow, philanthropist, world traveler, and one of the most fascinating figures to emerge from Newberry Transcribe yet.

Two Detectives, One Answer

Emily came to the mystery from the inside out. Part of an online community called the Diary Detectives, Emily figured out that the daughter Sarah addressed as “Jessa” was Jessamine; in the handwriting, the name could easily look like “Pepa” or “Papa.” Another clue came when Sarah marked the anniversary of her husband Allen’s death and remembered the place where they had married 44 years earlier.

Then came the lightbulb moment. On June 3, 1880, Sarah wrote that Tom Welch had invited her to travel to Europe with him: “oh my patience how it excited me,” she wrote. “I wrote Tom that I would go.” Emily found a newspaper notice saying that a Mrs. Withers planned to travel to Europe with Mr. Welch — and the departure date matched the diary.

Sheila took a different route, following names in the transcript until she connected Sarah’s son-in-law, John Winter, to the wider family. She also contacted the Bloomington Historical Museum, which confirmed the identification and noted that its collection includes another Sarah Withers diary.

Reading Between the Lines

Once the diarist had a name, the entries came into focus. Sarah wrote nearly every day: about letters, church, illness, weather, French lessons, Turkish baths, loneliness, and home. During her travels, she recorded visits across Europe. On the return voyage, she wrote movingly about three babies who died at sea, grieving for the mothers who “could not have imagined this would be the end of their journey.”

The diary also holds harder histories. Sarah writes often about Henry, a man connected to the Withers household. Emily’s research found that Sarah and Allen had purchased Henry as a child while living in Missouri; after the family moved to Illinois, Henry was free but remained close to the family. The diary preserves that complicated intimacy — affection alongside the brutal facts of slavery.

A Life Worth Knowing

Sarah’s later life left a civic legacy. Her will helped fund a library in Bloomington, another in Jessamine County, Kentucky, a children’s park with no “keep off the grass” signs, and a home for aged and indigent women named for Jessamine. She also left money to the local AME church in Henry’s name.

Both diary volumes are marked complete in Newberry Transcribe, but Emily hopes to keep revisiting them, filling in words earlier transcribers couldn’t decipher. That, too, is part of the work: not just finishing a transcription, but returning to it with sharper eyes.

Together, Emily and Sheila turned an unidentified diary into a life story — and gave a woman who once called herself “the lone old woman” her name back.

Browse the diary — or read it with transcriptions by clicking "Image w/ Text" and paging through with the arrows.