Community Corner
Daboll's Almanac - A Treasured Publication For Over 195 Years
The New England Almanac And Farmers' Friend, Created By Groton's Own Nathan Daboll, Was A Local Favorite
The author of the well-known journal the New England Almanac And Farmers’ Friend was not only a Groton resident, but his family house still stands on Candlewood Road and Route 117 in Center Groton.
Nathan Daboll, born in 1750, was one of a long line of Dabolls to run the publication. Daboll started the almanac in 1773, which ran for over 195 years. By the late 1800’s, The Farmers’ Friend had more than 30,000 copies in circulation annually.
Daboll, an astronomer, educator and mathematician, was asked to offer his expertise by friend and publisher of various almanacs, Timothy Green. Daboll agreed in 1771 and wrote under the Psuedonym “Edmund Freebetter” until he began signing his own name in 1793.
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A cooper with little formal education, Daboll was considered by general standards to be a brilliant mathematician – enough so to garner recognition from Herman Melville in Moby Dick.
The passage reads, "I’ll get the almanac and as I have heard devils can be raised with Daboll’s arithmetic…”
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Daboll wrote and published Daboll’s Practical Navigator and the first arithmetic textbook in 1799. His book became the standard text used in New England schools for years, but his almanac remained the household favorite.
The journals, much like a variety show on paper, offered weather predictions, tide and full moon charts, ship and whaling information and events. The hand-stitched publications also included entertaining gems such as proverbs, poems, helpful household hints, gossip, subtle political satires, Farmer’s Fireside articles and advertisements.
In every almanac, Daboll designated 12 pages to the brightest moonlit days of the month. Each month was listed with the dates of the most radiant evenings followed by unrelated essays for each such as What’s Americanism, When One is Past Middle Life or The Smallest Post Office in the World.
One nugget of wisdom from the Varieties section 1896 read, “The Chinese have a saying, that an unlucky word dropped from the tongue, cannot be brought back by a coach and six horses.”
The Farmers’ Friend had it all: how to purify water with alum, new varieties of grapes out of New Jersey – the Conquerer and the Challenge, preserving furs, brewing a choice cup of tea or ideal instructions for making toast water.
An article from the Baltimore American in 1892 referencing the Farmers’ Friend wrote, ”Every farmhouse throughout New England has an almanac, which always hangs at the side of an old-fashioned fireplace in the kitchen. Steamships and sailing vessels that cruise from New England seaport towns invariably have the ‘Farmer’s Friend’ hanging over their cabins, too.”
After Daboll’s death in 1818, his son Nathan Daboll Jr., a member of the House of Representatives and later in the State Senate, ran the almanac from 1818 to 1862.
Up until 1967, members of the Daboll family kept the publication rolling on the presses. Eventually, the New England Almanac and Farmers’ Friend were sold to Yankee Magazine which marked the end of a 195-year era for both lovers of the local publication and Dabolls.
Copies of the almanacs can be viewed at the Groton Public Library.