Burke Library Receives Chester Gillette Diary for Collection

Hamilton College's Burke Library received the donation of Adirondacks murderer Chester Gillette's diary from his grandniece in a ceremony on March 6. Gillette was convicted of the 1906 murder of his lover Grace Brown at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. The diary was written between 1907 and 1908 while Gillette was in Auburn prison, awaiting his execution.

Grace Brown's murder inspired Theodore Dreiser's classic, An American Tragedy, as well as other books and the movie "A Place in the Sun" and an episode of the TV series "Unsolved Mysteries."

President Stewart and Marylynn Murray

Marylynn Murray, Gillette's grand-niece, inherited the diary in 2003, and after doing some research on the Internet, learned about Hamilton's collection of other items related to the case. She decided to donate it to Hamilton because the College's collection does not deal with the sensationalism of the case. It includes Grace Brown's letters to Chester and documents from the trial.

Couper Librarian Randy Ericson said, "What we've lacked is a better and fuller understanding of Chester and what he went through. This diary fills that out the character of Chester," Ericson noted. "It shows a Chester no one knew existed." He thanked Murray for making the diary available to the wider world.

In receiving the dairy from Murray, Hamilton President Joan Stewart said "We are very fortunate that the diary came into the hands of someone so discerning and generous," noting that many people would have simply sold such a collectible on eBay. She added that it will "be a wonderful resource for Hamilton's course on the Adirondacks and will help us understand the complexity of history."

Ericson said the diary will be preserved and restored then the contents will be transcribed, scanned and put on the library's Web site.