Manuscripts

Anonymous travel diary

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Description: This pocket diary documents the travels of an anonymous New Englander traveling throughout the Old Northwest and the Great Plains regions, possibly seeking investment opportunities. He visits Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas, offering frequent comments upon communities from Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Leavenworth, Kansas, including comments upon religious practices, as well as encounters with different Indigenous peoples and Mormons leaving Utah. The author also comments on Mr. Chase, the owner of the Virginia Hotel in Jefferson City, Missouri, stating: "...owns quite a number of slaves -- quite a slave breeder." Along the way he meets William H. Russell (one of the founders of the Pony Express).
Type: Manuscripts(Opens in new tab)
Production date: 1858, March 16-September 4.
Call number: mssHM 83443
Provenance

Jacob W. Waldsmith letter to John Waldsmith

Manuscripts

A handwritten letter (ink on paper) by Jacob Waldsmith to his father John Waldsmith, conveying news from Waldsmith's travels through the Midwest and Great Plains in the autumn of 1857, visiting Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska territories. In the letter, he comments upon the agricultural and economic potential of the region and the turbulent political condition following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. While in Missouri, he describes "The land is rich and productive...This I verily believe would soon be one of the foremost states in our union for agriculture if it was not for the damnable curse called slavery, the agitation of which has been rageing in this part of the country..."

mssHM 75847

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Anonymous diary

Manuscripts

This small diary was kept by an unknown man, probably living in southern California in 1930. He seems to be a boxer and talks about "bouts" and training at the gym.

mssHM 77964

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J.H. (James Hervey) Simpson letter to Richard H. Kern

Manuscripts

J.H. Simpson writes of his travels to and arrival at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and of details of other troops.

mssHM 20646

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Richard C. Backus travel diary

Manuscripts

The travel diary documents Richard C. Backus' road trip from New York to Los Angeles with typewritten notes and labeled photographs. The diary includes details regarding their trip and the various people and places they visited along the way through Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The typewritten notes include details about miles driven, car trouble and repairs (the group traveled in three vehicles), and road and weather conditions. The diary also includes a hand-drawn map of the group's driving route.

mssHM 84014

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Mrs. C. H. Ackerman diary

Manuscripts

Mrs. C. H. Ackerman wrote this diary of her travels from July to September 1886. She and her husband Neal took a trip starting from Susquehanna, PA to Wilkes-Barre, going on to Patterson, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City where they stayed at the Coates House, and then to Fort Leavenworth. From there, they traveled to Denver, Colorado Springs, Leadville, San Francisco, Yosemite, and Salt Lake City. The diary also covers their trip back east with numerous observations concerning mining towns, seeing many Chinese quarters in the larger towns, and noting the scenery. Mrs. C. H. Ackerman provided a faithful and candid description of her travels through the American West, covering both the elegant and refined to the arduous and exhausting to the awe-inspiring. With the diary is a letter by E. R. Payson to Mrs. Ackerman, 1890, February 17.

mssHM 83113

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Billy Newbanks letter to Maggie Newbanks

Manuscripts

An autograph letter written by a young man to his sister living in Monmouth, Illinois. He comments on her education, plans to get an organ, and learning to dance while he also discusses his loneliness, family matters and sends greetings to various friends. He mentions the social life of the fort, the "colored soldiers in other words Negros" and the Native Americans living near the Fort. Newbanks had arrived at Fort Sill just three years after the post was established to prevent Native American attacks upon Euro-American settlements in Kansas and Texas. The letter has slight foxing, with an addressed, postmarked envelope.

mssHM 83796

Anonymous travel diary

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Jacob W. Waldsmith letter to John Waldsmith

Anonymous diary

J.H. (James Hervey) Simpson letter to Richard H. Kern

Richard C. Backus travel diary

Mrs. C. H. Ackerman diary

Billy Newbanks letter to Maggie Newbanks