Library Guides: HIST 2950: European Migration in the 19th-20th Centuries: First-Person Accounts

First-Person Accounts: Diaries, Letters, Memoirs

North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Using the Advanced Search, you can look for writings by emigrant women. Use Nationality (choose one or more of them) and Personal Events (choose emigration).
Date Coverage: Colonial times-1950.

Maximum Users: Unlimited

Truncation:
Truncation: *; Wildcard: .; Capitalized: #
American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
In the Advanced search you can specify Personal Events: Emigration.
Date Coverage: 1861-1865

Maximum Users: Unlimited

Truncation:
*

Selected books and microforms:

Ab-sa-ra-ka, home of the Crows : being the experience of an officer's wife on the plains ...
Published 1868. Available in Special Collections and the State Historical Society.
Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley; or, Pioneer life in the West.
Available in Special Collections and the State Historical Society.
Emigrant life in Kansas
First-person account published in 1886. Available in Special Collections.
Letters from the West : containing sketches of scenery, manners, and customs, and anecdotes connected with the first settlements of the western sections of the United States
"The following letters were commenced in the year 1820 and were intended for the pages of a periodical work [the Portfolio] in which some of them have been published." Available in the State Historical Society and Special Collections.
The life of Joseph Bishop : the celebrated old pioneer in the first settlements of middle Tennessee
1858 autobiography of Joseph Bishop related by him to John W. Gray, who wrote it and added three chapters. Available in Special Collections.
A narrative of the life of James Pearce, in two parts. Part I, containing a general account of his early life; and more particularly of five years residence in the states of Mississippi and Louisiana, together with some account of that country, its inhabi
1825 first-person account available in Special Collections and the State Historical Society.
The new purchase, or, Seven and a half years in the far West
An account of pioneer life in Bloomington, Monroe Co., Ind., where the author was first principal and then a professor in the seminary and college which later developed into Indiana University. Available in Special Collections and the State Historical Society.
Recollections of the last ten years, passed in occasional residences and journeyings in the valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg and the Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Florida to the Spanish frontier
1826 account available in Special Collections and the State Historical Society.
Thrilling and Tragic Journal Written by George Mckinstry, Jr., While on a Journey Overland to California in 1846-47.
Nearly day-by-day account of the four month journey. Microfilm.
A true picture of emigration: or Fourteen years in the interior of North America; being a full and impartial account of the various difficulties and ultimate success of an English family who emigrated from Barwick-in-Elmet, near Leeds, in the year 1831.
An 1848 guide dictated by a woman to her son about emigrating from England to Pike County, Illinois. Available in Special Collections and the State Historical Society.
York Pioneer’s Recollections of Youthful Days in the Emerald Isle, also of his emigration and first impressions of Canada...
Morphy was a diamond merchant and jeweler in Toronto, Canada, for about 50 years when this account was written. He grew up in Monaghan, Ireland, and immigrated to Canada in 1835 when he was 15 years old. Microfilm.