Publication: "The Past Has Been a Blank: The Diary of Thomas Cahill" (Minnesota History)

My essay "The Past Has Been a Blank: The Diary of Thomas Cahill" appears in the Summer 2025 issue of Minnesota History. 

In 1865, Thomas Cahill was in his early 20s, a recent graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, when he left his family's home in Shieldsville, Minnesota, to look for work. He ended up working for a few months as a farm laborer in Peoria, Illinois, before ending up as a watchman on a steamboat moored for the winter in St. Louis. During 1865 and 1866, he kept a diary, which along with an account of his daily life includes original poetry, two poems written in the Dakota language, and an entry written in code. The essay attempts to reconstruct this year in the life for an ordinary young man, while confronting the limits of what we can know about the past. 

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