Boston merchant Harbottle Dorr, Jr. (1730-1794) was a noted merchant and member of the Sons of Liberty. He was also an avid newspaper reader. Beginning in 1765, Dorr spent more than a dozen years purchasing newspapers, writing comments in margins, inserting reference marks in articles, and assembling his own indexes. His papers of interest included the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and...

The late Harrison Forman was a well-known photojournalist, world traveler, and fellow of the American Geographical Society. During his long career, he focused on places such as the South Pacific, Africa, South America, and the Middle East. He was known as a "modern Marco Polo" and his primary interest was in people and their daily lives. Years after he passed away, his photo collection of about...

For the past few years, the staff of the Special Collections Division at the University of Missouri at Columbia have been scanning a number of important texts, and creating a rather helpful collection of online materials contained within this site. Many of the texts available here are early accounts of local and regional history, including William Bryan's recollections of the pioneer families of...