The diary contains notes and comments about weekly activities, including attendance at prayer meetings, revivals, and social activities and pasttime pursuits such as reading, sewing, knitting and visiting the poor and sick. The diary also serves as a confessional.

Diaries are concerned with family affairs, farm work, rural social life, politics, genealogy, the author's service in the Union Army during the Civil War, and his duties as a Justice of the Peace; include daily notations on temperature, humidity, rainfall and other changes in the weather.