Access is granted in accordance with the Protocols for the University Archives and Records Center.

 

PROVENANCE

Gift of J. Pennington Straus, A.B. 1932, LL.B. 1935, August 1991.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

David Ralston Stief was born in Philadelphia on February 13, 1896. He first lived with his parents, William F. Stief and Jane M. Ralston, at 4517 North Thirteenth Street. The 1900 census lists William F. Stief as a paper hanger living with his wife, Jennie, and his son, David R., on Montgomery Avenue in Bala Cynwyd, Lower Merion township, Montgomery County. The family would later move back to North Thirteenth Street in Philadelphia.

David Ralston Stief attended Haverford College, entering in 1914 and leaving in February of 1917 to serve in the Army Medical Corps during World War I. After beginning as a private in the Isolation Division of an Army hospital in France, he was promoted to corporal and served in the office of the surgical division and later, as a sergeant, worked in the office of the registrar of thehospital and the post office. His duties in France also included guard watch at Morhiban and Brest.

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After returning to Philadelphia, David Ralston Stief worked as a clerk to lawyer William A. Gray while attending Temple University Law School; the 1920 census lists Stief as a clerk in a law office. At that time he lived on Thirteenth Street in Philadelphia, with his mother, a brother William F. (age 17), and two sisters, Anna (age 9) and Reba (age 19).

After attaining his law degree, Stief continued to work in William Gray's law office. By 1942, his draft registration card indicated that Stief had a law office in the Girard Trust Building in downtown Philadelphia and that he lived with his wife, Lillian B. Stief, at 1405 W. Wyoming Avenue in Philadelphia.

In the 1950s, Stief moved to Longport, New Jersey. He continued to work as a lawyer, conducting most of his work in New Jersey, but returning at times to Philadelphia to work with William Gray. Stief died of cancer in May of 1967, in Longport, New Jersey.

 

SCOPE AND CONTENT

The diary, May 18, 1917 - April 22, 1919, is an account of Stief's service during World War I. Stief intended to relate his war experience in the diary, but because he did not have much combat service, the diary primarily contains candid and colloquial descriptions of the everyday experiences of his life in England and France. There are accounts on the leisure hours of hospital workers in Ally France. Interspersed throughout the text are photographs and caricatures.

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