Dearest Diaries

James Cummings collects the stories of our lives, our autobiographies. Over the last four decades, he has assembled 16,000 diaries—believed to be the world’s largest collection—which he shares with scholars, historians, and those researching their ancestors.

“If somebody cared enough about their life to record it, and somebody cared enough about that record to publish it, then somebody should care enough to put them all together—and that somebody turned out to be me,” says Cummings, 64, who purchased his first diary when he was 13.

Cummings is not just a collector, though; he’s a caretaker of the written daily records of both the famous and the unknown. His passion for diaries emerged coincidentally through his love of nature. As a boy, his hikes through the woods along the Mississippi River near St. Paul, Minn., led him to search the shelves of local bookstores for journals penned by naturalists John Muir, John Burroughs, and Ernest Thompson Seton.

When Cummings became a Knapp, Wis., book dealer in 1958, he purchased diaries for his personal use along with other books he bought for resale. When he realized nobody was collecting diaries, he decided he would.

Cummings has driven all over the United States looking for diaries and believes he has 95 percent of all the diaries ever published. His collection includes works by John Quincy Adams and Winston Churchill and a Quaker diary printed by Benjamin Franklin in 1749.

“Being in alphabetical order, there’s some pretty humble people next to some pretty interesting people,” Cummings says, walking among his literary treasures.

Cummings’ diary collection is housed, floor-to-ceiling, in a 24-by-32-foot addition to his home a few miles west of Knapp (pop. 275) and is open to anyone with an interest. A sign outside reads: James Cummings, Bookseller, By Appointment.

“Many are not listed in any standard bibliography of diaries,” says Margo Colley, a University of Massachusetts English professor who discovered a number of women’s diaries previously unknown to her while writing her book A Day at a Time: The Diary Literature of American Women from 1764 to Present.

Joan Keller, president of the Dunn County Genealogical Society, says the size of Cummings’ collection overwhelmed her group when they visited Knapp. “But we’ll be back,” she says. “Being genealogists, we are interested in its historical value.”

“It’s a joy for me to have them out,” Cummings says of his visitors. “They’re always enthusiastic. They’re always interested. They’re always polite and respectful of the collection.”

Cummings is a keeper of his own words as well as those of others. In addition to his voluminous diary collection, Cummings may hold the world’s record for maintaining a daily diary without interruption.

“I don’t know anybody else who has kept one every single day for 50 years,” he says. “Queen Victoria kept a diary for about 70 years, but she didn’t do it every single day.”

Cummings began making daily entries in 1951 after being inspired by a line from Ralph Waldo Emer-son: “The unrecorded life is not worth examining.”

Periodically, Cummings runs into people who he inspired to keep a diary. “I don’t proselytize keeping a diary unless I get a chance to,” he says with a chuckle.

He got that chance a year ago at the Unitarian Society of Menomonie Church, which he attends.

“I started (a diary) because he talked so persuasively about it,” says Naomi Colvin, a member of the congregation.

Although Colvin didn’t continue her diary, Cummings opened the door to a midlife career change for her. He has been showing Colvin the ins and outs of book dealing. “I consider him my mentor,” she says.

Some are astonished Cummings would train potential competition, but he doesn’t see it that way. “There aren’t enough of us,” he says, referring to antiquarian book dealers. He has another motive for sending others into the book-buying world. “They might find a diary for me.”

Mary Miller is a freelance writer in Lakeland, Minn.

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