The first diary relates the experiences of Samuel Preston, a Philadelphia Quaker, on a business trip westward from Philadelphia through Pennsylvania to the frontier and barely post-frontier towns and settlements of Western Maryland, Virginia, and present day West Virginia. Preston traveled as an agent of the Philadelphia firm of John Field and his business was to collect money from farmers, mill owners, and other vulnerable pioneer settlers, but whether for rent or merchandise the diary does not say. However collecting was hard. Preston's diary is an admirably detailed account of the travel and life of that early time.

Samuel Preston was born in Buck's County, Pennsylvania, descendant of a Quaker family. An earlier Samuel Preston was a friend of William Penn, a member of the Provincial Council, and a prominent landholder. Our diarist was a surveyor, businessman, driver of hard bargains, and writer of readable prose. In 1789 (the year after the present diary) he went into what is now Wayne County in northeast Pennsylvania, of which he was a founder. A township there is named for him. In his History of Wayne County, Phineas G. Goodrich writes of Samuel Preston: "He was a man of genius and a good mathematician. He built the first mills in Buckingham, and in 1806 had cleared up 130 acres of land. He greatly promoted the settlement of the town, everyone being welcome... He brought his iron and merchandise up the Delaware River. ... In 1793, he was married in Buck's County to Mercy Jenkins, a Quakeress. ... He had many peculiarities, but they were harmless... He was appointed the first associate judge of the county [Wayne], and at December sessions, 1798, charged the first grand jury impaneled in the county. At a good old age he died peacefully at his residence in Stockport."

Preston's diary of 1788 is a prime firsthand account of the economy of frontier life, with many pertinent comments on the land, manufactures, commerce, and labor problems of the time, expressed in the colorful language to which his "peculiarities" and crotchets gave rise. Preston departed Philadelphia on February 11, 1788, and crossed the Schuylkill on the ice. He rode horseback to Pequea, Lanacster County, and to Lancaster, Elizabethtown and Middletown. When he arrived at the last "it was what some People call Valentine and the young people of the town all collected there [at the sign of the Goose] to draw their Valentines. I was diverted to sit and laugh at their nonsense - some of them were very genteel people and sensible in a Middletown Way." 

He crossed the Susquehanna on six-foot ice and "landed below the Mouth of Yellow Breeches... pass[ed] on through that fine tract of land called the Indian Manor" to Silver Spring, Carlisle and Shippensburg, where he found "a very worthy and exemplary set of Presbyterians - the tavernkeepers say Grace, a thing I never met with in any other place in all my Travails." He then went on to Chambersburg and Greencastle, where he found "chiefly Log Houses - here they are in the practice of eating their meat raw," and "crossed Mason and Dixon's Line it is almost grown up" to Hagerstown, Maryland. Preston traveled on to Williamsport where he crossed the Potomac into Virginia (now West Virginia) and traveled through Martinsburg and "Berkly" (Berkeley Springs) to historic Winchester, where he found:

 "...the real native of Virginia very proud and insignificant and loudly exclaiming against the Pennsylvanians for adopting the new constitution - say they were a dum set of dutch Carters - I told them in my opinion the contrast was the Pennsylvanians drove horses and the Virginians Negroes."

Preston presently returned to Maryland via Martinsburg and  Shepherdstown, on one stretch going "25 miles without any dinner as I love dispatch," and crossed Antietam creek to stop at Middletown, Maryland. By this time he had been so successful in making collections that "the weight of money I had in my saddle bags made traveling rather more tiresome to the Horse and myself rather fearful of being in some danger. I always made it a rule to put my saddle bags on and off myself and not let strangers eel the weights...Indeed Alexander the Great says never ask another to do what thee can do thyself - under this consideration I could curry down my horse, only that would be robbing the poor Boys of their Stipend."

The diarist's itinerary thereafter was to Frederick Town (largest in Maryland after Baltimore), Woods Town (Woodsboro?), Tawney Town - "as this is a very Tawney place, I made as little stay as possible" - to York and Lancaster in Pennsylvania and thence "crossed Conestoga Ferry" to Downingtown, returned across the  Schuylkill and home to Philadelphia, " ... having accomplished my journey in 19 days ... [and] considering the inclemency of the Season, difficulty on Account of Ice and Snow I apprehend few People would have went through the same fatigue in much less time and if this Journal is not wrote in a plain Hand, it was wrote altogether on my knee," etc.

Following Preston's journal is another by an anonymous writer, describing a similar business trip, from Philadelphia to Carlisle, in the following summer. It is briefer and less detailed than Preston's but it begins with the interesting statement that it was "Influenced, in some measure ... by the Example of that truly and literally great and exalted Genius S. Preston, whose journal is contained on the preceeding pages and who has lately gone before me on the same road." It concludes with a timely reference:

"The Disputes here [in Carlisle] respecting the old and new Constitution run very high. They got to Loggerheads about 3 weeks ago at an Election... and several were much bruised... The opposers of the New Constitution are in general Men who have not been long in the Country - have but little property and are extremely illiterate. It is thought they mean to oppose the rejoicing on the 4^th of July and it [is] expected if they do this there will be some lives taken for the Federalists are determined to pursue their rejoicing at all events."

The diaries are excellent on the spot accounts of economic and social life in towns, settlements, and taverns in southern Pennsylvania, Maryland and western Virginia in the early Federal era. An earlier journal by Preston, from 1787, was published in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, (Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 350-365) as Extracts from the Journal of Samuel Preston, Surveyer, 1787. Describing travels and surveying in what is now Pike County, Pennsylvania. The present diaries appear to be unpublished. 

 Accompanied by printed document appointing Samuel Preston "one of the Justices of the county court of Common Pleas for Northampton County, dated April 12, 1790, signed by Thomas Mifflin.