Phelps, gave her business through her large estate, Forty Acres, with other women in the community making it a habit to make an appearance when Dickinson was there. While Rebecca did have some higher profile and wealthier clients, fixing wardrobes for local families made up most of her business. Dickinson went on to oversee apprenticeships for local children, with one of them being her niece Rebecca. For her, apprentices were beneficial as they provided an extra set of hands for daily work and offered companionship. At the height of her career, Dickinson was part of a community of gownmaking women in the Connecticut Valley who were well known for their work in altering wardrobes and creating new and fashionable garments. Diary Dickinson was born during a period of increasing levels in female literacy during the eighteenth century in the colonies. This meant that she was among the population of young girls who were taught to read and write. These skills are what allowed her to start her own diary, which she began keeping in her thirties. An example of her diary comes from her earliest surviving diary entry on July 22, 1787, “This day is the 22 of July 1787. Here alone in this house. There has been a thunderstorm here this afternoon, some hard thunder and rain. It is good to be where God’s voice is to be heard.” Because of her marital status, she referred to herself as an “old maid”, which was a popular derogatory term that categorized older women who had never married. After the Revolutionary War in New England, however, some young women felt a sense of pride in holding such a position or reputation. Rediscovered in the late nineteenth century by relatives, Dickinson’s surviving diary consists of her struggles with her faith and her state of singlehood. Although “Aunt Bek” was well liked in Hatfield and had a reputation of a “Saint on Earth”, her diary reflects a constant tone of sadness and despair. Rebecca Dickinson kept a journal for years but she burned all of those that existed just before her forty-ninth birthday because she believed that they had been written poorly and were too concerned with "earthly" matters, such as motherhood and her personal possessions. Singlehood Although Dickinson was offered marriage at least three times, she chose to live alone for most of her life as she did not find the idea