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This volume contains accounts and a diary kept intermittently by Massachusetts merchant Horatio Gates Sanford between 1835 and 1884. Diary entries pertain to Sanford's religious convictions, conversations about Christianity, and attendance at Sabbath School and other church activities.

This volume contains accounts (27 pages) and a diary (128 pages) kept intermittently by Massachusetts merchant Horatio Gates Sanford between 1835 and 1884. The first 27 pages record financial transactions between Sanford and numerous persons from February 16, 1835-January 14, 1836, including the amount of "cash sales" made with each person listed.

The majority of the volume consists of diary entries that Sanford wrote sporadically between 1840 and 1884. The first section (October 15, 1840-February 6, 1843) contains daily entries about Sanford's philosophy of faith and includes occasional mentions of his personal and domestic life. The earliest entries relate to Sanford's experiences at his dying mother's bedside. He discussed her steadily declining health, the effects his mother's death had on his religious convictions, the family's reaction to her death, and her funeral. By November 1840, Sanford had returned home to Boston, where he often wrote about religious conversations, topics of sermons, and his activities at the Bowdoin Square Church. The second diary section (July 23, 1846-September 12, 1846) has near-daily entries about similar religious topics. The final group of entries (February 2, 1884-March 24, 1884) pertains to the death of Harriet Sanford, Horatio's wife, and his religious convictions. He continued to attend sermons and Congregational prayer meetings as he neared his 76th birthday. One letter fragment addressed to a Sabbath School is inserted into the volume (August 1858).