Joseph Lye was born in Lynn, Mass., in 1792, being one of the nine sons
of Joseph Lye, a shoemaker and soldier of the Revolution, and Ann Hart.
He kept a diary which shows that he “was first clerk of the Second
Congregational church (Unitarian), clerk of the Fire club, served
as juryman, trained in the militia, watched with sick friends and
neighbors. He was something of a traveler in his modest way, worked as
a shoemaker, painter, fisherman and skipper, and sailed small boats. He
cleaned the chimney, set out posts and fences, fixed the pump, caulked
boats and helped kill the neighbor’s pig. Interested in religious
matters, he led the active, useful life of a good citizen.”
Altogether, he was a busy man. He viewed life from many angles. His
diary is doubtless a good and accurate record of the acts and thoughts
of the average man of his time. It furnishes material for contrast with
men and their ways of these days.
In Lye’s time all work was done by hand. Machinery was scarcely known.
Men often worked alone, for the factory system had not been started. As
they toiled in solitude they read from a book or meditated in silence.
They were given to deep thinking.
He lived in extraordinary times. His father told him of the Revolution.
Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson were laying the foundations of the
new nation. Pioneers were pushing their way west. Inventors were busy.
Fulton sailed the Clermont down the Hudson. Inventors dreamed of the
steam locomotive. American ships opened trade with the Far East and
brought back “the wealth of the Indies.” The nation had prospered so
much that it had a surplus in the treasury.
The shoe business flourished. John Adam Dagyr, “the Celebrated
Shoemaker of Essex,” had taught his fellow workers of Lynn how to make
shoes equal to the best imported from London and Paris. Newspapers
of the time urged people to buy American shoes instead of imported
footwear. Ebenezer Breed, an early captain of American industry, had
induced Congress to put a protective tariff on American shoes.
Joseph Lye, the diarist, learned shoemaking of his father, the
Revolutionary soldier, as did many a lad of his time. He worked on the
farm, too, and became a handy man, able to undertake most any of the
simple tasks of his time. He was content to work industriously and
to live thriftily. Ambition did not tempt him. He thought deeply upon
matters of religion. The Puritan conscience then was alive. He kept a
diary. Its records are a good standard by which to compare the acts and
thoughts of an average man of a century ago with the acts and thoughts
of an average man of today, should any reader desire to do so.