Compelling Civil War Diary Found in Maine : History: Journal that had slipped between cracks in attic tells of Lee’s surrender, Lincoln’s death. It apparently was written by a housekeeper.

A man renovating a farmhouse discovered a dusty leatherbound diary that offers a glimpse into a woman’s life during the Civil War era.

The unidentified author referred to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender and Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on the pages of the 3-by-5-inch journal.

A reference dated April 10, 1865, says: “It is raining this morn. good News from War. Lee has surrendered with his Army.”

And less than a week later: “Nice pleasant morn but verry bad News from War The President is Dead was killed by a (undistinguishable) There is great mourning all over (undistinguishable) land.”

Ramon Villani, who discovered the book while ripping out a wall in his dining room, suspects it was stored beneath an attic floorboard and slipped through a crack into the wall below. The house was built in 1862.

The author left few clues to her identity on the diary’s blue-lined pages, but her sex is revealed by references to her employment as a housekeeper.

The penciled entries reflect a life marked by church outings, occasional visits to downtown Auburn, visits to her father in Brunswick--and, sometimes, boredom. Her entries were more sporadic during the summer, when she mentioned “haying” and harvesting crops in the fields.

Villani, a laborer at a Portland shipyard, said Friday that when he discovered the book “It shocked me . . . it really blew my mind away.”

When he came upon the passage about Lee’s surrender, “My hair stood right up.”

Also discovered were a catechism text, a tattered rag doll and a hand-carved croquet ball.