He was already a successful lawyer and community leader when the serious entries began in the 1830s, denying us a detailed vision of the first decade in Indianapolis. Realizing the need to fill this gap, the editors turned to other Fletcher family papers, relying in particular upon journals and diaries of his wife, Sarah Hill Fletcher, and letters to family members who had remained in Vermont. Having once done so, the editors supplemented subsequent volumes with similar documents, adding texture and information but sometimes interrupting the tone and message of Fletcher's diary. The real imbalance of the volumes, however, was of Fletcher's own choosing. Caught up in the events of the Civil War, and often reflecting at length upon the course and meaning of events, he created a record between 1861 and 1865 that was as long as that he kept in either the 1840s or the 1850s.
Most readers grow a bit tired as they move through the last volumes.
Whether the content of the Fletcher diaries serves future generations as well as it has served ours will, no doubt, depend upon the questions that upcoming generations of historians ask. But in one way, whatever the fashions, the diaries will leave a clear mark. No feature of the Indiana history scene in the last quarter century has been of more importance than the dramatic expansion of the infrastructure of historical resources. Through the creation of catalogs and indices, through the conservation and expansion of collections, through transcription and translation, through a new consciousness of the importance of historical records and their access, local historical resources are both more varied and more accessible than ever before. No one project or person can claim sole credit for that change.