Ryan to Speak on Civil War Documents

Ellen Ryan, Digital Project Manager, Kent Library, Southeast Missouri State University will talk about a grant-funded project to identify and digitize original documents and photographs from the Civil War period, 1854-1877, in a program at the Cape River Heritage Museum, 538 Independence Street, on Saturday May 19 at 2 pm. The project, Confluence and Crossroads: The Civil War in the American Heartland, is a collaborative effort of Kent Library's Special Collections, the Center for Regional History and the Department of History at Southeast Missouri State University, the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, and the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Funding comes from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library and Services and Technology Act as administered by the Missouri State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State.

Materials of interest include original letters, journals, ledgers, diaries, photographs, scrapbooks, and other ephemera from this period of history. The survey area includes the following counties in Missouri: Ste. Genevieve, St. Francois, Washington, Reynolds, Iron, Madison, Bollinger, Perry, Cape Girardeau, Wayne, Carter, Ripley, Butler, Stoddard, Scott, Mississippi, New Madrid, Pemiscot, Dunklin, Crawford, Dent, Shannon, and Oregon; and the folloing counties in Illinois: Randloph, Jackson, Union, Alexander, and Pulaski. If you have items that you would like to contribute to the project, bring them along, and we can scan them after the talk!