This paper utilizes the recent findings of science-based dream research, rather than the traditional framework of psychohistory, to show how the dreams recorded in the diary of one man, William Byrd II, parallel the tensions which pervaded his life in colonial Virginia. While there is no established meaning of dreams, it is known that traumatic dreams of death, separation, and mutilation increase with stress and that they are directly associated with personal distress. The nightmarish dreams of Byrd’s diaries directly parallel the everyday events that produced anxiety in his life. This paper incorporates the references that Byrd made to illness, death and personal failure from his diaries and other writings to show the correspondence between his everyday life and his frightening nocturnal visions. By focusing on the presence of traumatic dreams rather than on their analytical interpretation this paper suggests that such dreams may be a viable historical tool for exploring the vast reservoir of dream material found in many seventeenth and eighteenth-century diaries.