This letter, by former President John Quincy Adams,
is in response to a request by the Mechanical Library Association of Baltimore for
Adam’s to speak at their facility at some future date. This association was connected
to and an outgrowth of the Baltimore volunteer Mechanical Fire Company, formed
by the company for member’s self education. Adams is informing them that he will not
be able to
This letter was written in 1849 by a forty-niner in St. Louis, one William H. Morse, to a friend back home in New England. He’s been in St. Louis for three weeks, the last stop on the frontier, as he prepares to embark on a journey westward on the overland trail, making his way to California in search of gold. He describes his 35 day trip thus far, from an unnamed town in the northeast, south