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George L. Van Bibber IV diary

 Collection
Identifier: MS 2409

Abstract

Voluminous daily diary kept by Bel Air, Maryland resident George Lindenburger Van Bibber IV (1906-1979). He describes subjects such as meals, weather, conversations, parties, clothes, financial transactions, movies, books, radio and television programs, world affairs, and travels. The diary volumes are indexed in a card catalog system invented by Van Bibber in 1947.

Dates

  • 1926-1979

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research use.

Conditions Governing Use

The reproduction of materials in this collection may be subject to copyright restrictions. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine and satisfy copyright clearances or other case restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in the collections. For more information visit the MCHC’s Rights and Permissions page.

Biographical Note

George Lindenburger Van Bibber IV was born on March 12, 1906, in Harford County, Maryland. He was the son of Armfield Franklin Van Bibber (d.1953) and Susanna Rebecca [Michael] Van Bibber (d.1955). He had one brother Edwin M. (d.1967) and two sisters Katherine and Ann (Mrs. William T. Whitney).

Van Bibber was a life-long resident of Bel Air, Maryland, living at 303 Main Street, his childhood home. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1929 with a degree in architecture and was employed as a draftsman in the Edgewood Arsenal from 1936-1960. His real interests lay however in local history, travel, literature, and the cinema. He made numerous trips abroad, culminating in a five-month round-the-world voyage in 1975.

Van Bibber was active in the Harford County Historical Society, serving on its Bicentennial Commission and writing a monograph “Notes on Bel Air - a character sketch of our county seat.” He designed the seal for Harford County and the town seals for Bel Air, Aberdeen, and Havre de Grace.

Over the years Van Bibber contributed numerous columns to local newspapers. He wrote “Crazy Horse Spoke” for the News Advertiser and the Havre de Grace Record and “Henry Harf Hath Hearde” published in the Bel Air Aegis. He illustrated his columns with drawings and caricatures.

Van Bibber never married. After the death of his mother in 1955, he began renting rooms in his house to boarders and having all his meals in the restaurants and cafes of Bel Air. This habit ensured that Van Bibber was a familiar personage in the town and his diaries are full of references to pedestrians or motorists hailing him during his perambulations.

Throughout much of his life Van Bibber was plagued by insomnia and many of the later volumes of his diary record his efforts to occupy the hours of sleeplessness. Many of these hours were spent on the diary itself with its time-consuming transcriptions, amendments, indexing, and the like. Indeed it occasionally seems as if the diary were the focus and raison d'etre of Van Bibber's life with many of the elaborations of style, annotations, etc. growing out of a need to occupy his thoughts and time. The days were structured by the grooves of habits and patterns repeated over the years but Van Bibber's relatively unfettered and solitary existence was made even more inward-directed and solitary by the regimen of keeping his diary.

Van Bibber also suffered from alcoholism. The gradual progression from the exuberant drinking of a college youth to social drinking as a young adult to dependence and abuse of alcohol in maturity is evident in the pages of the diary -- indeed, there must exist few autobiographical accounts of the disease as meticulous as this one. In 1968 Van Bibber was hospitalized for several weeks in a state of near physical collapse after one particularly severe period of abuse. As a result of this episode, with its attendant warnings of fatality, Van Bibber embarked on a period of abstinence which lasted ten years. He frequented the same familiar cafes and kept the same company without jeopardizing his own resolution.

Van Bibber died on March 26, 1979, after an illness of several weeks.

Extent

? Linear Feet (63 volumes; 5 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Arrangement

The volumes are arranged in chronological order.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift from the estate of George L. Van Bibber IV in April 1979. The material was handed over to the Maryland Historical Society by John S. Carver, J. Garland Green and Charles H. Reed, named by Van Bibber in his will as his Personal Representatives.

Related Materials

The Gallery of the Maryland Historical Society has sketches and watercolors by George L. Van Bibber IV.

Scope and Contents

The most remarkable feature of this collection is the voluminous daily diary kept by George L. Van Bibber IV from August 1926 to February 1979, the month before his death. The diary occupies 63 chronological volumes (with 7 additional volumes kept by Van Bibber on his travels), totaling approximately 50,000 pages. The format of the diary evolved over the years as Van Bibber refined and modified his system but the commitment to a faithful recording of the minutiae of everyday life never wavered. Not only do the entries capture life's progression of one individual from youth into old age but also they preserve a contemporaneous record of the social and technological changes over half a century.

Van Bibber recorded his daily routine from literally the exact time at which he awoke, to his meals, his conversations, mail received and sent, his dreams, what he wore, when he washed his socks or brushed his teeth, what clothes he took to the cleaners, his purchases, and financial transactions. He described parties and reported conversations, noted the pieces of classical music broadcast on the radio, summarized the plots of radio and television programs, movies and books, reported the weather, and commented on world affairs. When he was traveling, this recording became even more complex with times of departure, descriptions of scenery, hotels, cities, fellow travelers and the like.

Van Bibber began his diary while a student at the University of Virginia. He used old classroom notebooks and wrote in a dense scrawl, completely covering the pages with numerous amendments, additions and marginalia. Van Bibber occasionally made entries in Russian or in a (seemingly) invented alphabet. Many of the early volumes contain whimsical sketches or architectural drawings.

In 1935 Van Bibber began typing his diary on loose-leaf sheets of paper and binding them into volumes of approximately 1,000 pages. With few exceptions, he continued this practice until his death. He kept notes throughout the day and then transferred this information to a typed narrative form. Many of the early volumes contain indexes of those items or events Van Bibber deemed important but in 1947 he refined his system even further by instituting a card index. The subject headings of this card system are listed on pages 12-13 of this register. By far the most voluminous category is “motion pictures” reflecting Van Bibber's enthusiasm for the cinema, but there are also hundreds of cards for “books” and “letters.”

Van Bibber was a poor speller and often wrote in a phonetic style but in 1971 he began using an elaborate and complicated “shorthand” system of his own invention. With the exception of the diary of his round-the-world voyage in 1975, he made entries in this code for the rest of his life. The volumes for the latter years (1974-1979) also include Van Bibber's personal correspondence and copies of his replies.

In addition to the diary the collection includes three volumes of poetry written by Van Bibber; the typescript of his monograph “Bel Air - a character sketch of our county seat;” his treatise on English grammar, pronunciation and spelling titled “Wurz the Far at?;” and one folder of newspaper clippings and miscellaneous souvenirs.

Title
Guide to the George L. Van Bibber IV diary
Status
Under Revision
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script

Revision Statements

  • 2020-02-11: Manually entered into ArchivesSpace by Sandra Glascock.

Repository Details

Part of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library Repository

Contact:
H. Furlong Baldwin Library
Maryland Center for History and Culture
610 Park Avenue
Baltimore MD 21201 United States
4106853750