Theodore Victor Peticolas, born 29 Feb. 1800 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was a fruit farmer in Union Township, Clermont County, Ohio at the time he maintained this diary. It contains his account of the day-to-day routine farm work, crops, family, neighbors, and social life. Peticolas' son Edward, by 1863, had been discharged from the 6th Ohio Infantry Regiment for a disability suffered in the War. Edward died on Christmas eve, 1863.