Adam Ludewig, an Alpena, Michigan, bookseller's clerk in his early 20s, recorded information about his activities, interactions, and the weather in this pre-printed daily Excelsior diary. He provided very brief notes on his work in the store ("All well / Busy in Store"); documentation of church and Sunday school attendance; and mentions of letters, notes, and visits by young women—with occasional afterthoughts such as "poor girl is to have a tooth pulled this morning" or "I do not know what to do. Time will be my best support." He noted the books he read, from "Titcomb's Letters to Young People, Single and Married" to Goethe's "The Sorrow of Young Werther." He painted and studied French. Ludewig frequently abbreviated names and other words, occasionally wrote sentences with old German script, and sometimes encoded words with pigpen cyphers. Seven small pen and ink drawings are scattered within the volume.
Civic and other organizational work mentioned in the diary include financial support for the German Aid Society and the Arbeiterverein, and attendance at evening Masonic Lodge meetings (identified in the diary only as drawings of oblong squares in quotation marks). He became Secretary and noted that he paid $1.00 for life insurance from the Masons (for $1,500 coverage).
Adam Ludewig was born in Germany on April 1, 1862, to Robert and Amelia Ludewig. Sometime prior to 1871, Adam Ludewig, his parents, and his siblings immigrated to the United States, settling in Alpena, Michigan. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1884. In 1885, he worked as a clerk in a bookstore and later became a businessman and bookseller in his own right. Adam Ludewig married English Canadian Susan J. Kerr on June 25, 1895.
