Kenneth Spencer Research Library Archival Collections

This collection consists of correspondence and documents involving Charles H. Branscomb, agent for the New England Emigrant Aid Company in territorial Kansas, dating from 1853-1886. Correspondents or individuals mentioned in the letters include James Gillespie Blaine (1830-1893), Amos Adams Lawrence (1814-1886), Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), Charles Robinson (1818-1894), John Pierce St. John (1835-19140, and Charles Sumner (1811-1874).

Halderman was private secretary to A. H. Reeder, 1st governor of Kansas Territory. The letters deal with early Kansas Territory and State politics and government, land values and taxes, and some personal affairs.

The letter concerns personal real estate transactions and troubles along the Missouri-Kansas border between free state and pro-slavery partisans. Letter is written on back page of "Appeal of Kansas to the voters of the Free States" dated Topeka, July 4, 1856. This printed appeal concerns the contested election of 1856 and an appeal for Kansas to join the Union as a free state.

The collection of correspondence, documents, and addresses of Charles Robinson, housed in the Kansas Collection, is mainly from the period 1854 to 1861. Robinson was a resident agent for the New England Emigrant Aid Company and an advocate for the Free State, anti-slavery cause. There are items on the founding of the University of Kansas. There are also letters from Mrs. Robinson to F. W. Blackmar, the biographer of Governor Robinson.