There are many primary sources of historical information, but few can relay a more complete picture of the past than diaries and letters. While public records provide facts, and later history books and family histories can tell a story, the contemporaneous writers convey emotion along with both the mundane and surprising details of life on the frontier, which can give us a real “feel for the place.”
This set of writings includes items both brief and lengthy: a letter (Thomas Edison), a collection of correspondence (Gustafson Family), long diaries (William Parmenter), and published books (John and William Bartram), to name a few. Copies of these and many more are available in the Archives.
