Australia

Overview Correspondence, speeches and essays, and other papers pertaining to the military and diplomatic service of Colonel George R. Latham (1832-1917), who was a delegate to the Wheeling Convention in 1861, colonel of the 2nd West Virginia Infantry during the Civil War, a member of Congress from 1865 to 1867, and the United States consul in Australia from 1867 to 1870. Materials from the late 1860s and early 1870s relate to the consulate in Melbourne. These include shares of the Fiji Adventure of...

Overview Letters of Henry and Joseph Bennett concerning travel by sea from New York to Chagres, Panama, overland across Panama and by ship to San Francisco in 1851. Letters from California, 1852-1853, discuss arrival of immigrants; employment conditions and wages; gambling and social life in San Francisco; investment opportunities; conditions in the gold mines; travel by steamboat to Hangtown (Placerville); churches; crime; Indians; mining profits; cost of land; ranching; blacksmith and plough shop...

Overview

Letters from Atkins while serving with the First Cavalry, U.S. Army. Atkins was stationed in Australia in 1943, his unit moving to New Guinea in January 1944, the Admiralty Islands in March 1944, and the Philippines in October 1944. He was wounded in the fight for Rizal Stadium in Manila. Letters deal with routine camp life and more rarely with battles in which the unit was engaged. After the war Atkins became a professor of journalism at West Virginia University.