These notebooks contain the correspondence and memorabilia of Oscar Learnard. Included are original letters, transcriptions of original letters, photographs, photographic reproductions of legal documents, and clippings. The notebooks and their contents are arranged in a rough chronological order.

Topics include Learnard's activities as an early settler in Lawrence, Kansas in the 1850s onward; as an organizer of Burlington, Kansas in 1857 and a member of the Territorial Council, 1857-1859; as an organizer of the Republican Party in Kansas, 1859; as judge of the Fifth Judicial District; as an officer in the First Kansas Volunteer Infantry; as a State Senator, 1868-1871; as a publisher of the Lawrence Journal, 1884-1905; and as Superintendent of Haskell Institute, Lawrence, Kansas, 1889.

Much of the material in these volumes is copied from the originals housed at the Kansas Historical Society.