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Manuscript diary of David R. Preston, Presbyterian minister and missionary assigned to Pensacola, Florida, and St. Charles, Missouri, 1828-1829, containing information on the number of missionaries and regularly assigned ministers of the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopal churches in the areas, the number of church services held, attendance and interest of the congregations, organization of Bible classes, and Sunday schools. Preston also preached to black congregations and comments on their attendance and attitude. There is comment on the Roman Catholic Church, its activities, means to combat its influence, and its social and business life. Preston also held services in the Escambia River area of Alabama. Names of people living in the areas are given as well as descriptions of land and business enterprises, and opinions concerning future settlement and economic development. The names of U.S. Navy ships in the Pensacola harbor are mentioned with comments on the officers, condition of the ships, and discipline maintained. Conditions and cost of travel by stage and boat are commented on with accounts of Preston's journeys from Philadelphia to Pensacola, and from Pensacola to St. Charles.

Typescript memoir of the life of Mother Jones, entitled "Mother Jones: the Life Story of the Irish Immigrant Girl Who Became the Most Unique Character in the American Labor Movement, Living Past 100 Years," written by Lillie May Burgess of Hyattsville, Maryland, and copyrighted 8 February 1938. The manuscript is in two parts, several pages of which are missing. The first part (241pp.) is entitled "The Life Story of Mother Jones: American Labor's Joan of Arc," and is a narration of events in Mother Jones' life. It includes a description of her early years, before she became a labor activist, and some of the highlights of her labor career. Her activities in organizing miners in West Virginia and Colorado receive most emphasis, but also included are her activities among women brewery workers, her participation in the 1919 steel strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, her interest in the Mexican Revolution of 1911, her views on woman suffrage and prohibition, her meetings with various presidents and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and her friendship with Terence V. Powderly, fellow labor activist. The narration follows closely that of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MOTHER JONES, published in 1925 by Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago, Ill., with the addition of some chapters on her life after 1925. The second part (106pp.) is entitled "The Last Years of Mother Jones (Personal Reminiscences)." It is a narration of the later years of Mother Jones' life, ca.1927-1930, most of which she spent under the care of the author, Lillie May Burgess, at the Burgess home in Hyattsville, Maryland. Mrs. Burgess relates the circumstances under which Mother Jones and she became friends, how Mother Jones came to live with the Burgess family in 1927, and what these years of her life were like.

Personal, medical, and business papers, account books, and daily journals of a Harpers Ferry physician (d. 1883). Subjects include the practice of a small town doctor, his related business interests, and the education and careers of his children, three of whom became medical doctors. Included are the papers of William V. Marmion (1840-1922), who studied eye surgery in Vienna and established a practice in Washington, D.C. There are letters from George Marmion, acting surgeon and secretary of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and letters of Robert A. Marmion (1844-1907), who was a naval surgeon and the first president of the Naval Medical School in Washington, D.C. Many of the letters, especially after 1883, are those of the Marmion heirs and are concerned with family, personal, and financial affairs. Some letters shed light on the condition of the gold market after the Civil War and family activities as prominent members of the Roman Catholic faith. There are a few fragmentary records regarding John Hancock Hall, a relative, who invented and patented the first American breechloading rifle in 1811. He was later hired by the government in 1819 to establish and operate a "rifle works" in close proximity to the federal armory at Harpers Ferry (see box 17).

Letter and account books, clipping scrapbooks, and miscellaneous family papers of a pioneer, Ohio Valley, general merchandise firm founded by Dudley Woodbridge, Sr., at Marietta, Ohio, and operating under various names for a period of more than sixty years. The collection also includes the account books of Daniel, Richard, and John Greene, 1808-1844; account books of F.B. Loomis, 1842-1844; a medicinal formulary book; the estate records of John Brody; records of a pension and bounty land claims agency operated by George M. Woodbridge, 1861-1864; and justice of the peace accounts, 1832-1863. Subjects include the development of river markets, transportation, and the livestock industry in the early Ohio Valley; fur trade and commerce with England and Europe; the Marietta and Susquehanna Trading Company; Kanawha and Sciota salt works; Ohio Company lands; Woodbridge-Harman Blennerhassett partnership; ginseng trade; Wheeling Cotton Manufacturing Company; ropewalk and shipbuilding in Marietta; military land warrants; estate of George Morgan; career of William Woodbridge, United States senator and governor of Michigan; pioneer education; Meadville Seminary; Ohio University; Miami University; Marietta Collegiate Institute; Belpre, Ohio; American Catholic missions; early history of Marietta; the American Colonization Society; Washington County Colonization Society; churches; Washington County Tract Society; recruiting in Marietta during the Civil War; impact of the War of 1812 on westward migration and labor; and Woodbridge family affairs. Letters are addressed to merchants in London, France, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charleston (West Virginia), Lexington and Louisville (Kentucky), Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, Detroit, and Baltimore. Correspondents include Lewis Cass, Philip Doddridge, and Benjamin Reeder.