"Love Letters from Missouri" is a human interest story of a young Missouri doctor, Dr. Samuel Ayres, who joined the general exodus of 1850 to the gold fields of California in the pursuit of riches. As promised to his wife, Samuel faithfully writes letters describing his day-to-day adventures of the trail, including brief encounters with Indians, successful treatment of numerous chases of cholera along the Platte river between Fort Kearney and Fort Laramie, and celebrating the third anniversary of the establishment of the Great City of Salt Lake. Frequently he mentions his loneliness and heartbreak being away from his wife Priscilla and their two small boys, of concern for his own personal safety and of his extreme disappointment in the deteriorated conditions and lack of opportunities found in California on his arrival. Following only one actual day of labor in the gold fields, Dr. Ayres succumbed to illness and tragically dies November 19, 1850, six months and one week after his departure from his Missouri wife and family.

During the mid-nineteenth century, a quarter of a million travelers—men, women, and children—followed the “road across the plains” to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle—the second installment of Will Bagley’s sweeping Overland West series—captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America’s first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them retells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration. Traditional histories of the overland roads paint the gold rush migration as a heroic epic of progress that opened new lands and a continental treasure house for the advancement of civilization. Yet, according to Bagley, the transformation of the American West during this period is more complex and contentious than legend pretends. The gold rush epoch witnessed untold suffering and sacrifice, and the trails and their trials were enough to make many people turn back. For America’s Native peoples, the effect of the massive migration was no less than ruinous. The impact that tens of thousands of intruders had on Native peoples and their homelands is at the center of this story, not on its margins. Beautifully written and richly illustrated with photographs and maps, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them continues the saga that began with Bagley’s highly acclaimed, award-winning So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812–1848, hailed by critics as a classic of western history.

Set in 1856 Missouri, seventeen-year-old Mariah Rainey has lived with little hope that life will be any different for her than it has been for her motherliving in poverty with an abusive husband and five children. Upon the death of her mother at her fathers hand, Mariah is suddenly thrown into survival mode: charged with her mothers dying wish that she take the children to safety, far away to someplace green. She quickly must learn the skills of a man in order to protect her siblings from her father and to somehow make an escape to her mothers family in Kentucky via the old abandoned Wilderness Road out of Independence. With her father sure to follow, Mariah and her younger sister, Lolly, disguise themselves as young men and take off with their baby brother, Trill, to face the treacherous journey to freedom. Able to handle any crisis along the trail, Mariah thrives as a man, but she can never escape the wrath of her father or the horrible retribution he will exact upon her and everyone she loves.

The matriarch of a remarkable African American family, Sally Thomas went from being a slave on a tobacco plantation to a "virtually free" slave who ran her own business and purchased one of her sons out of bondage. In Search of the Promised Land offers a vivid portrait of the extended Thomas-Rapier family and of slave life before the Civil War. Based on personal letters and an autobiography by one of Thomas' sons, this remarkable piece of detective work follows the family as they walk the boundary between slave and free, traveling across the country in search of a "promised land" where African Americans would be treated with respect. Their record of these journeys provides a vibrant picture of antebellum America, ranging from New Orleans to St. Louis to the Overland Trail. The authors weave a compelling narrative that illuminates the larger themes of slavery and freedom while examining the family's experiences with the California Gold Rush, Civil War battles, and steamboat adventures. The documents show how the Thomas-Rapier kin bore witness to the full gamut of slavery--from brutal punishment, runaways, and the breakup of slave families to miscegenation, insurrection panics, and slave patrols. The book also exposes the hidden lives of "virtually free" slaves, who maintained close relationships with whites, maneuvered within the system, and gained a large measure of autonomy.

A heartwarming memoir of love and faith from Hannah Brencher—founder of The World Needs More Love Letters—who has dedicated her life to showing total strangers that they are not alone in the world. Fresh out of college, Hannah Brencher moved to New York ready to change the world. Instead, she found a city full of people who knew where they were going and what they were doing and didn’t have time for a girl still trying to figure it all out. Lonely and depressed, she noticed a woman who looked like she felt the same way on the subway. Hannah did something strange—she wrote the woman a letter. She folded it, scribbled “If you find this letter, it’s for you…” on the front and left it behind. When she realized that it made her feel better, she started writing and leaving love notes all over the city—in doctor’s offices, in coat pockets, in library books, in bathroom stalls. Feeling crushed within a culture that only felt like connecting on a screen, she poured her heart out to complete strangers. She found solace in the idea that her words might brighten someone’s day. Hannah’s project took on a life of its own when she made an offer on her blog: She would handwrite a note and mail it to anyone who wanted one. Overnight, her inbox exploded with requests from people all over the world. Nearly 400 handwritten letters later, she started the website, The World Needs More Love Letters, which quickly grew. There is something about receiving a handwritten note that is so powerful in today’s digital era. If You Find This Letter chronicles Hannah’s attempts to bring more love into the world—and shows how she rediscovered her faith through the movement she started.

Includes the decisions of the Supreme Courts of Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas, and Court of Appeals of Kentucky; Aug./Dec. 1886-May/Aug. 1892, Court of Appeals of Texas; Aug. 1892/Feb. 1893-Jan./Feb. 1928, Courts of Civil and Criminal Appeals of Texas; Apr./June 1896-Aug./Nov. 1907, Court of Appeals of Indian Territory; May/June 1927-Jan./Feb. 1928, Courts of Appeals of Missouri and Commission of Appeals of Texas.