(Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a three-part series. It is running over a five week period rather than three consecutive weeks.) Thirty notebooks in pristine condition lay about me on the bed in Los Angeles after my husband had surprised me with the diaries of his great-great-grandfather, Charlie Tinker, a White House telegrapher who had been friends with President Abraham Lincoln. Gingerly, I picked up the wonderments of history and found them to be in exceptional condition as though they were only a few decades old not 150 years.