Abigail Langley was the wife of John Granbery, Junior of Nansemond County, Virginia. She survived her husband, who died in 1733, ultimately remarrying into the Hargraves family. Her Journal is a combination of accounts and family records and, in view of its beginnings in 1694, represents one of the earliest female “diaries” of the 17th century.

The Journal of Abigail Langley is here transcribed and reproduced in facsimile by her descendant, the late Alice Granbery Walter, who also explains how the diary was passed down in her family since someone inscribed the date “1694” on the front cover of the original. Mrs. Walter always credited learning about the existence of the journal as the impetus for her genealogy of John Granbery. Any researcher with Granbery, Langley, Mason, or Thelaball ancestry may take similar inspiration, if they make the time to delve into it.