Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

The papers consist of diaries, weather journals, commonplace books, reading notes and other material documenting the life, work, and intellectual interests of the Jamaican planter and slaveowner Thomas Thistlewood. Daily entries in the diaries, which Thistlewood kept from 1748 until a few weeks before his death in 1786, are a rich source of information on plantation life and work, including management of sugar plantations and livestock plantations; economic and social relations among landowners, overseers and slaves; and Thistlewood's own professional, intellectual and sexual activities. Thirty-four years of weather journals chronicle the Jamaican climate, including the great hurricane of October 1780, while twenty volumes of reading notes, memoranda, inventories, lists of books, and other papers reveal Thistlewood's intellectual and scientific interests, such as botany and the collection of medicinal plants; chemistry; mathematics; and navigation.