William W. Winters biography, [1853?]
1 volume
This manuscript is a 141-page biography of William W. Winters (1826-1895), a one-time medical student from Ohio, cabinetmaker, daguerreotypist, and Methodist Minister, among other professions. The biography and subsequent pasted-in documents draw heavily from Winters's own diary entries and trace the events of his life from 1826 to 1853.
Written largely from a third-person perspective, Winters's biography stylistically embodies nineteenth-century artistic and literary Romanticism. Here, a younger Winters is characterized as "schivalrous and full of gallant deeds in matters of Cupid, came off first best." Likewise, Winters is cast as "our hero" within the narrative. A later portion of the volume continues Winters's history, but from a first-person perspective, using "extracts [taken from] his journal in his own language."
Winters's employment experiences include tanning, cabinetmaking, operating a drug store, taking daguerreotypes, and serving in appointments as a deacon and then a reverend in the Methodist church. Descriptions of these occupations are conveyed with varying detail. Also noted are his experiences as a student, first at Oberlin College and, later, at Norwalk Seminary. Winters's courtship and marriage to Philenda Howard, as well as his divorce from her in 1853 on grounds of adultery, is richly detailed.
Laid into the front of the volume is a "Methodist Episcopal Church Quarterly Ticket" and the end of the journal is pasted in a fragment of Winters's 1844 wax-sealed appointment as a church deacon, and 12 fragments of a manuscript, four of which are photocopies.
Among many notable topics of interest are:
- Mormonism (pp. 12-13)
- Body snatching (pp. 66-67)
- Work as a daguerreotypist—Springfield, Ohio (p. 123)
- Divorce—Springfield, Ohio (pp. 131-32)
- Ordination as a Methodist deacon (pp. 88-91)