Edgar A. Sisson began his diary as a young man on his father's farm in La Plume, Pennsylvania. By this time he was thoroughly trained to be hard-working, church-going, and hospitable. Most of what he reported were his daily chores, the weekly sermons he heard in church, and visitors to the family farm. At the age of twenty-three, Sisson set out for Washington Territory, keeping an account of the trip in volume one. His record of life in Washington also begins in volume one.

He arrived in Skagit County in December, 1872. There he claimed land and with his comrades began building a home. They also built a carpentry shop where they made much of their furniture. Volume two contains a draft of a letter, dated January 21, 1875(?) from Sisson to his church friends in Pennsylvania with the address, La Conner, Washington Territory. In the fertile and marshy area of La Conner and Fidalgo Island, Sisson and his friends began to plant crops and build dikes and sloughs. Sisson formed a business alliance with a man named Whitney, and when the Swinomish Grange was organized in August of 1874, their small company joined it. The company made and hauled rails and worked on several dike bridges in the area. It was short-lived though, and the Whitney and Sisson Company was dissolved in 1877. A year before that, Sisson married a young woman from Pleasant Ridge named Ida.

These volumes concern the everyday activities of E.A. Sisson's busy and prosperous farm in Padilla. He had several men working for him, owned a threshing machine and hired his men out to thresh other farmers' crops for them. In Volume 4 Sisson recorded the accounts of farmers with whom he did business. Volume 7 contains his accounts of his hog sales, his cabbage sales, more records of his threshing jobs, and a record of work done by his diking crew, 1890-1891. In 1894-1895 the diking company did a lot of work on the Swinomish Flats. By volume 9, the company was engaged in dragging the local roads also. Its diking and damning activities increased during periods of heavy rains and high tides as in 1886 and 1895.

Nearly always seeming to do well with his crops, Sisson produced large quantities of hay and oats, at times baling twenty-three tons of oats a day. An account of hay sales for 1891 is found in Volume 6.

From Sisson's entries, one learns a sizable amount about the Sisson family life, their comings and goings, their births and illnesses. In 1885, Sisson's third child and only son, Grant C., was born. In 1901 his oldest daughter, Pearl, married John Wilson and moved to Samish to live. Also in 1901, the family was quarantined for smallpox, Sisson himself contracting the disease. Around 1897, Sisson's wife, Ida, became ill with a consumptive kind of ailment and was never completely well for any length of time after then. At times she was bed-ridden. In 1884 and 1904, Sisson made two trips East to visit his parents and relatives, taking Grant with him in 1904. His father, A.C. Sisson, visited him in Washington in 1891, and his daughter, Pearl, made a trip to Pennsylvania in 1898. In 1903, the family erected telephone lines on their property. Inserted in the beginning of Volume 6 is a letter from Sisson's brother, George Sisson of Pennsylvania, who is a major correspondent. Another major correspondent is Eva Reed.

This last section shows Sisson engaged in civic and political activities as well as in farming. He served as secretary of the local branch of the Pioneer Association and attended the Skagit River Improvement Association in 1909 when the river flooded and broke a dike. He represented the first district of Skagit County, Anacortes, on the board of county commissioners, which met in Mt. Vernon once a month, and was chairman of the board at one point. He was also a member of the Board of Equalization. The board of commissioners heard bids and signed contracts for the paving of roads and the building of dams in Skagit County, and sometimes competition for bids seemed strong. In 1918, a suit was filed against the commissioners by two companies over the paving contract for Avon Allen Road. The suit was eventually withdrawn. Some of the commission's other projects were the building of the Samish River Bridge in 1918, and the paving of Harmony, Clear Lake, and Whitney Anacortes Roads in 1919. Sisson frequently went to inspect projects with other commissioners. He records many commission business trips, including one to Seattle to investigate "the English Right of Way for Pacific Highway" in 1919, and one to Fredonia Drainage District where the commissioners held hearings in 1917. In 1916 they went to Kitsap County to see a tractor work.

Active in local Republican activities, Sisson was elected to the state legislature in November 1912. The session in Olympia lasted from January to March of 1913. Later, his son, Grant, also served in the legislature. In January of 1921, Sisson retired from county office, after which he was asked to run for mayor but refused.

Sisson spent a lot of the latter part of his life taking various short trips. In 1908, he and Ida visited the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition grounds in Seattle. In 1923, he took a trip to Mt. Rainer, to Renton, and Cashmere over Blewett Pass, and camped at Denny Creek. In August of 1926 he made a camping trip to Oregon. Also he made three trips back East, one in 1910 via San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, one in 1916, and one in 1925. While he was away, his wife, Ida, and his daughter, Nettie, made daily entries into his diary for him. Though generally brief, their entries sometimes reflect their personalities and concerns. In 1932, he and Ida both were very ill, but he made his last entry in 1932 on an optimistic note, at the age of eighty-three.