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Preferred Citation:

Mina Barnhouse Diary, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary.

Acquisition Information:

Purchase.

Processing Information:

Accessioned and described in May 2009 by Ute Schechter.

Scope and Contents

Diary titled "Covered Wagon Days, As Written by Mina Barnhouse," documenting a family's 1895 move from Kansas to Flathead Valley near Kalispell, Flathead County, Montana as part of a larger wagon train. The diary was written in 1945 and it is not clear whether it is a transcription of a 1895 document or whether it was composed 50 years after the event based on memory or oral histories. The diary begins on June 13th with a summary of the wagon train members and continues as day-by-day account of events and movements through Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, concluding on September 15th.

Several clippings from newspapers and magazines, photographs, and postcards are glued into the diary; most of them are about people and places in and around Flathead and Kalispell.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Clippings (information artifacts)
• Diaries
• Migration, Internal--United States--History--19th century
• Postcards
• Wagon trains--Montana--1890-1900