Includes typed notes on the family. He talks of the weather, crops, the prosperity of the country, a revival meeting, and their need of a preacher. Brief biography of Ben Butler, legislator, governor, Union general, senator, and presidential candidate, who ran as a Republican, Democrat, and Greenback. Marriages and deaths, activities of friends and relatives, election returns, prices paid for household goods, farm life, and Civil War experience. Letters from Jacob Gourgas to his brother John Mark, and other papers of family interest.
Letters are in French.
Also copy of letter of J.H. Ellis criticizing Odon's conduct as provost in St. Joseph, 1863. The bulk of the collection is letters written between Guthrie and his mother and sisters living in Columbia and Marthasville, Missouri. Collection includes correspondence with wife and friends, essays, speeches, unofficial reports, law notebook, legal cases in Boone, Callaway, Macon, and Randolph Counties, and diary of Mary Hardin, 1854-1856 and 1859. 1 volume Notations concerning weather, social life, and business in Boonville, Missouri. The families were related only by marriage, but had business dealings in slaves and stock.