8/1/2002
By Sharon DeBartolo Carmack
Female ancestor's coded diaries
Q. I've run into a new kind of brick wall — my great-grandmother's diary partially written in code. A normal-sounding entry is followed by something like "May 20, 1904=IA-X#I ll=D o,:" Do you have any ideas where I might decode this entry?
A. Women are known for coding their diaries because some things were too intimate to write about, even in a diary. Without analyzing the full diary and the exact code, it's impossible to speculate on what your great-grandmother was coding. But you can look for patterns, which could help you crack the code.
Women most commonly coded their diaries to keep track of their menstrual cycles, and the codes are as unique as the woman. One diarist used three exclamation points, another merely a p. In Seasons for Growing: The Diaries of Lizzie A. Dravenstatt, 1870-1928, edited by Patricia Sanford Brown, Lizzie marked a date almost monthly with an asterisk.