Historical Material from UNO Libraries' Archives & Special Collections

The diary of A.J. Van Nuys recounts the trip of A.J. and Lizzie Van Nuys to Benson, Nebraska. The diary contains brief daily entries along with some accounting of expenses. The diary includes entries from May 4-July 11 of an unidentified year in the late 19th or early 20th century. The names written inside the front cover are Mr. & Mrs. A.J. Van Nuys of Belle Mead, New Jersey and 831 Main St., Benson, Nebraska. Written inside the back cover in the same handwriting is the name Miss Della Mankwood, 2520 Downing Ave., Denver, Colorado.

Travel diary of a woman believed to be Anna Perainen from the Midwest visiting the West Coast of the United States. She visited Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Canada.
A partial transcription of the journal entries was provided by the seller.

The papers of Reverend Asa Farwell include correspondence and two unidentified tintypes. The four 1866 letters to Mary Ann (Sexton) Farwell, his wife, are from Bentonsport and Dubuque, Iowa; Albion, New York (while travelling); and Middlebury, Vermont. Topics discussed include church matters, travel, and family (11 pages). The collection also includes two 1879 letters from son Ed Farwell in Milton, Nebraska. He appears to be a young man or teenager at the time of the writing and discussing loneliness, chores, and someone named George grinding corn.

The Automobile Travel Diary documents three trips by car in 1917 and earlier. The travelers are based in Manatee, Florida, and recount travel by earlier automobile including staying at auto camps, hotels, and farmhouses. The first undated trip begins in Manatee, Florida, and concludes in Sacramento, California. The second undated trip begins in Handley, Texas, and returns to Manatee, Florida. The final trip recounted in the diary is dated 1917 and begins in Manatee visiting sites in and round Georgia including Andersonville Prison. Some expenses and notes are also kept at the back of the diary.

The papers of Dorothy Patach document her travels around the United States and international trips, her community involvement, and her career in nursing and nursing education. Documentation of Patach’s trips include scrapbooks, photographs, postcards, and ephemera from the 1930s to the late 20th century. Patach traveled throughout Nebraska and the Midwest, the West, and other parts of the U.S. There were many trips to California especially as her father worked in California for many years and in the summers Dorothy and her mother would travel from Omaha to see her father in California. The documentation of trips also includes a trip to China as part of an international nursing education group in the mid-1980s after President Ronald Reagan’s visit in 1984. Calendar pages from an Omaha Chinese restaurant with stereotypical depictions of Chinese people are also from this time period. Patach also visited Eastern Europe in the 1980s. The collection also includes an early 20th century ledger for a community organization kept by her father (possibly the Czech American Sokol organization), a group photo of employees of an Omaha company (Dorothy’s father is a tall man in a suit on the right side of the photo), and other family photos and albums or scrapbooks.

A scrapbook kept by white husband and wife Horace and Edith Hager on a road trip across the United States and briefly Canada in the mobile home trailer in 1948. The couple departed their New Jersey home pulling their new trailer they named "Ched." Edith or "Ede" and Horace or "Chap" along with their dog Candy are shown posing around the trailer in May 1948 before their departure. Photographs on their trip depict sites, people, animals, scenery, and other aspects of their trip. Included are photos of: bison ("buffalo") grazing east of Grand Island, Nebraska; Lookout Mountain and Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado; New Mexico; Horse Head on Blue Mountain and ranch hands in Monticello, Utah; Yellowstone National Park; and others. After Yellowstone the couple began their trip back to the east visiting Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Ontario, and New York. The final page of the album includes the notes "March – 1948 Yellowstone (indecipherable) / Omaha Neb. / Sept 30th 1948 / June".

The Edna Cole Postcards consist of nine file boxes of photographic travel postcards from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, representing more than thirty different countries. The postcards are organized alphabetically by country, and United States postcards are sub-organized by state. One German postcard includes a monument or sign related to the Third Reich.

The diaries of Edna Earl Martin McGuire span 1900 through 1905. McGuire wrote her name in the front of each of the two diaries, which are labeled book 3 and book 4. There is no documentation about books 1 and 2. The diaries document McGuire's daily life in Missouri including farm tasks, travel to neighboring communities and states, life with her husband Uncas McGuire as well as medical procedures she underwent. Also included is a photograph of McGuire.

The diary of Emma Frost, a 24 year old woman from Detroit, Michigan, documents her social activities, amusements, and household activities in 1914. She mentions spending time at a yacht club, her maid, attending dances and movies, painting, trips to River Side Park, dates with men, a summer trip to Georgian Bay and Mackinac Island, and other activities. Frost used several pages in the back of the diary for expenses and as an address book.

The five year diary of Gardia Reta (Peaker) Bailey documents life in the western United States during the Great Depression. The family lives in a trailer and stays at auto parks, such as the Wallow Saw Auto Camp, on the West Coast including in the state of Washington. Included in the diary are various pieces of ephemera including news clippings and photographs as well as notations about family members and birthdays. The diary mentions the family traveling to sell Reta's handmade baskets, illnesses such as mumps and small pox, boat rides on the Columbia River, traveling through Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, trips to Portland, fishing trips, dances, trips to the ocean, having a float in a parade, and giving birth to a stillborn baby.

Travel album or scrapbook documenting the trip of Gertrude Ball, Ridgway Ball, and Della Clapper from Omaha, Nebraska to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Their trip is narrated with extensive handwritten text in the album and includes photographs, postcards, and ephemera.

The papers of Hattie Lynde of Parkers Prairie and Waubun, Minnesota include a diary she kept in 1918, two postcards mailed to her husband Cornelisu V. Lynde while she was traveling with their son Kenneth in the western U.S., and an application to join the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1905. Lynde's diary shares her daily life including moving to a new town as well as life in a doctor's household during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (referred to as the Spanish Influenza) and her take on events during the final months of World War I.

The papers of June Turney include correspondence written to family and friends when she was a teenager or young woman in the late 1930s during the Great Depression. The letters were sent from June Turney’s time at Moss Lake Summer Camp in Eagle Bay, New York and a later trip to California.

Scrapbook created by an anonymous woman caught in a flood while traveling via train from Topeka to Wichita, Kansas with friends on a visit to friends. Their trip may have originated in Salina, Kansas. The scrapbooks opens with a typed account of their journey including being stranded in a Kansas town before reaching Wichita. The scrapbook also includes photographs and news clippings. The creator’s traveling companions were Iona Faulk and Eva Waite.

This collection includes materials from Travel & Transport, Inc., Nebraska tourism, and Haulaway, Inc. Also included are materials gathered from Lawrence Youngman’s interest in Nebraska aviation and air travel in general and from the months he spent in Europe as an Omaha World-Herald correspondent during World War II.

A photo album of a white family in Omaha, Nebraska includes photographs of adults in children around the home and in a rural setting. Notable photos include a series from the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha including a see-saw ride, "The Old Plantation" stage, Arch of States, streets of all nations featuring a camel, the lagoon, the administration building, and others. A photograph of a tree is identified as "the surrender tree - San Juan Hill - Santiago" in Cuba, which along with another caption referencing "Remember the Maine!" and a photo of a young man in a presumably military are references to the Spanish American War in Omaha.

A travel journal of a family’s move from near Ashland, Nebraska to near Arcata, California via train recorded in an incomplete copy of an unidentified almanac for 1874. The almanac begins with April 1874 and includes 89 pages of printed material including engravings. The journal or diary section at the end of almanac includes notes for all but seven days for 1874.

Some of the engravings include: German draught oxen, walls of Bologne, France, royal tiger, kangaroos, American elk, a fox raiding a roost, musk oxen, balloon travel, zebras, lobsters fighting, dragon fly, grand geyser of Iceland, falls of Zambesi, gathering grain, and others.

Diary of a young woman from a privileged background writing in the first half of the 1920s. Topics covered in her diary entries include yacht clubs, dancing, parties, golfing, tennis, trips to New York and California, as well as other topics. Places mentioned include White Sulphur, New Brighton, Farmington, Rolling Rock, New York, Bellows Falls, and others. The diary begins on November 6, 1920, and continues through 1924. The diarist’s birthday is December 1st and she is 19 years old when she begins the diary in 1920.

The collection of Ruth Wallace Ross includes photographs of her and her husband and two scrapbooks. The first scrapbook documents her student years at the University of Omaha from 1931-1935. The second scrapbook documents her cross-country trip in summer 1941 with her mother and cousin. The scrapbook includes photographs, guidebooks, brochures, and other ephemera. The scrapbook itself is of note because it is made of yucca.

The Arthur Paul Papers, 1940-1974, include Paul's journals, correspondence, reports, notes, data, and other material about Afghanistan especially financial matters and economic developments in Afghanistan in the 1960s-1970s. He served the Asia Foundation as an economic advisor to the Royal Government of Afghanistan from 1960-1966. Paul kept a daily diary documenting his travels and work in Afghanistan during this time period

The papers of John and Eupha Shanly is composed of correspondence, newsletters and notices from the U.S. consulate in Afghanistan, journals or diaries of John Shanly, drafts of books by Eupha Shanly, research material about Afghanistan, news clippings, a few items from a Christian church in Kabul for Americans, a small number of photographs, and other material.

The letters of Shirley A. Collins to her parents and other family members in the United States detail her life and activities while a Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan. The forty-four letters begin with her travel to the U.S. embassy in Kabul in October 1967 and end with her impending departure from Afghanistan in June 1969. Collins was a teacher in Jalalabad in the province of Nangarhar during her time in Afghanistan. Her letters to her family in the U.S. include accounts of her daily life, interactions with various people, impressions of daily life in Afghanistan, travel, and other matters.