Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 241, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 October 1913 — HAS A DIARY OF INTEREST [ARTICLE]

HAS A DIARY OF INTEREST

Patriarch Now Residing at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Has Kept One for Fifty-Nine Years. Henry Ballinger, an oldtime resident of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a man close to eighty-one years of age, opens a challenge to the world for having kept a diary continuously for the longest period of time. His record reaches a short while over fifty years. Mr. Ballinger resides at 1031 Mountain avenue, Coeur d’Alene, and spends the greater part of his time now calling on friends and writing page after page of diary daily. He began keeping the diary on September 18, 1854. At that time he was working at the carpenter trade on a high structure In Parke county, Ind. The scaffold upon which he was working gave way and he fell to the earth below. He survived the fall and believed his preservation providential. In that frame of mind he made a record of the accident and circumstances. Since that time every day has added its page in the diary, and incidents which are now In history are mentioned in the pages. Mr. Ballinger is a native.of New Garden (now known as Guildford College Post Office), not far from Greensboro, N. C.» his parents being Quakers.

In April, 1848, he Immigrated to Indiana. He saw the first engine that ran into Richmond, and aided in the building of the first railroad bridge across the Whitewater river, close to Richmond. In 1855 he went to Kansas territory. He was at .Lawrence and took an active part in the border war. In 1856 he returned to Indiana, where he married, after which he settled in Jasper county, la., where he resided upon a farm for a period of thirty years. Seven children were reared from his first wife and five from his second. •He came to Coeur d'Alene in 1900.