EX-UNION ARMY SURGEON GOES
AROUND THE HORN ON A REVENUE CUTTER

The journal of a former U.S. army doctor serving as surgeon on the U.S. revenue cutter Reliance from Baltimore to San Francisco, and evidently enjoying a friendship with Michael A. Healy—a.k.a. “Hell Roaring Mike”—who would later become the first person of African-American descent to command a ship of the U.S......

A DISABLED MOTHER FROM BUFFALO, NY
TOURS EUROPE

Two journals—with original photos and clippings—containing unusually intelligent and descriptive accounts of the tourist experience in Western Europe just after the turn of the century, written by a meticulously observant disabled woman traveling with her husband and adult daughters. The tour recorded in these journals takes Aurilla Fenton, her husband.....

A PENNSYLVANIA QUAKER TAKES TEA
WITH FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Two diaries kept by Quaker Henry Jones before and during much of the Civil War, recording and reflecting on matters of personal as well as national interest, including John Brown’s uprising and execution, the Emancipation Proclamation, Anti-Slavery Society meetings, lectures by such abolitionists as Henry Ward Beecher and Wendell Phillips.....

“THE PRINCE OF PESSIMISM” GOES A-WHALING
WITH A REVEALING LETTER FROM THE SHIP’S OWNER

A log from the golden age of American whaling, kept—unusually—by the ship’s captain, the notorious “Crazy Peirce,” the “Prince of the Pessimists,” including sixty whale and fluke stamps and offered, even more unusually, with a long, minutely detailed letter of instruction from the ship’s owner regarding the voyage. The logbook.....

A CONNECTICUT YANKEE
IN SOUTH AFRICA’S DIAMOND FIELDS

A Connecticut school-teacher’s account of his experiences in an early South African diamond field, written several years after his return and blending passages from his original journal with rich and engaging descriptions of mining, camp life, extraordinary incidents, his interactions with Xhosa and Khoekhoe laborers, and his arduous voyages to.....