Letitia Carson · Register
Writings and the reference library
What the creator has published about Letitia Carson since 1989, the transcriptions made from the record, and the works by other people he keeps alongside them.
Three different things sit in the creator’s Library folder, and the Library treats them differently. His own writing is reproduced where its text can be read and catalogued where it cannot. The Merandas’ transcriptions of the court and probate files are reproduced page by page. Everything else — other people’s books, articles, theses and letters — is identified by author, title and date, and linked to his copy. Nothing of anyone else’s is copied here.
Reproduced here, page by page
8 works, 219 pages, 44,605 words. Every page opens its own anchor, so a citation to a page resolves to a URL that will not move.
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David Carson Estate Sales Transcriptions, 1852–1859
The first of the ORWW Letitia Carson Research Reports: the creator’s introduction to the estate papers, then the Merandas’ transcriptions of the Oregon and Missouri probate files set out document by document.
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Carson v. Smith transcriptions, 1854–1857
Every paper in the Benton County case file, transcribed and headed by the filename of the scan it was made from, so that the reading and the image can be set side by side. Spelling, including the many spellings of Letitia’s name, is as the clerks wrote it.
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Oregon probate transcriptions, 1852–1857
The administration of David Carson’s estate in the Probate Court of Benton County, Oregon Territory, transcribed paper by paper and headed by the filename of each scan.
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Missouri probate transcriptions, 1852–1859
The parallel administration in Platte County, Missouri: John Robinson’s settlements and the powers of attorney by which David Carson’s brothers, sisters and their heirs collected their shares.
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A working list of the Missouri probate scans with a line of description against each, in the creator’s own words. Two of its lines carry his working notes to himself; they are left as he published them.
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The Search for Letitia Carson in Douglas County
The first half of the creator’s account of how the record of Letitia Carson’s life was assembled, with his timeline of that life from Kentucky to the Stephens graveyard, and a reprint of Stephen Staats’ 1876 recollection of David Carson on the trail.
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The Search for Letitia Carson in Douglas County, Part II
The homestead itself: the 1863 application, the 1868 certificate, the 1869 patent, the Lavadour marriages, and the creator’s open questions to the historical society’s members.
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Letitia Carson (ca. 1814–1888)
The creator’s short life of Letitia Carson, written for the online encyclopedia of African American history.
The creator’s writing, 1989–2016
15 items in his own folder. Many are scans of newspaper and newsletter pages with no text layer, which the Library cannot read and therefore does not describe beyond what his filename says.
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Student paper, Oregon State University, 1989
The earliest piece of the creator’s Letitia Carson work that he publishes. The scan carries no text layer, so the Library describes it from his filename and folder and does not state a title of its own.
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Corvallis Gazette-Times, 7 February 1991
First of four weekly pieces in the Corvallis paper. Scan without a text layer.
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Corvallis Gazette-Times, 14 February 1991
Scan without a text layer.
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Corvallis Gazette-Times, 21 February 1991
Scan without a text layer.
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Corvallis Gazette-Times, 28 February 1991
Scan without a text layer.
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Douglas County Pioneer, June 2014
In the quarterly of the Genealogical Society of Douglas County. Scan without a text layer.
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Douglas County Pioneer, September 2014
Scan without a text layer.
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The Search for Letitia Carson in Douglas County — The Umpqua Trapper 50(4)
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Douglas County Pioneer, June 2015
Scan without a text layer.
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Part IV. The Carsons and the Lavadours, 1868–1886 — Douglas County Pioneer 29(3), pp. 55–58
The issue has a text layer, but the creator’s article runs in columns beside other members’ articles and the two interleave when the text is extracted. Rather than publish a reading that mixes his sentences with somebody else’s, the Library catalogues the article and points at his scan.
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The Search for Letitia Carson in Douglas County, Part II — The Umpqua Trapper 51(1)
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The Umpqua Trapper, Summer 2015
Scan without a text layer.
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Oregon State Bar Bulletin, October 2016
Scan without a text layer.
Rights: these are the creator’s own work and remain his. He publishes them himself; the Library’s copy is a display copy, and permission is being recorded. Two of them appeared first in The Umpqua Trapper, the quarterly of the Douglas County Historical Society, and one in the encyclopedia at BlackPast.org — the Library reproduces only the pages of his own article and points at his scan for the rest of the issue.
The transcriptions
Jan and John Meranda transcribed almost the whole of the probate and lawsuit files. The records themselves are public records and are not under copyright; the transcription is the Merandas’ work, published by the creator and credited here to both.
- Carson v. Smith transcriptions, 1854–1857
- Oregon probate transcriptions, 1852–1857
- Missouri probate transcriptions, 1852–1859
Reference works out of copyright
17 works in his reference library published before 1929, or by a government and therefore never under copyright. The Library cites and links his copy; it does not make a second one, because several run to hundreds of megabytes.
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Captain Sol. Tetherow, Wagon Train Master: Personal Narrative of his son, Sam. Tetherow
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Douglas County Historic Resource Inventory: Nugget Schoolhouse
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The creator reprints Staats’ recollection of David Carson on the trail in his 2014 Umpqua Trapper article, pp. 18–19.
Works by other people, still in copyright
26 works. These are identified by reference only — author, title where the Library could read one, date, and a link to the creator’s copy. Nothing is copied and nothing is quoted. Among them are the two Portland State theses on Letitia Carson, the recent magazine and encyclopedia articles, the county historical files, and the promotional material for Jane Kirkpatrick’s novel.
Third-party works; identified by reference. If you hold rights in one of these and would rather the Library not name it here, tell us and it comes down.
Correspondence
7 letters and email threads in the creator’s correspondence folder, on the graveyard restoration, the Lavadour family line, the Platte County records and the Oregon State Bar article. They are other people’s letters and carry personal contact details, so the Library records only that they exist, and who they are between, as his own filenames give it. Nothing from them is quoted.
- Carley 19 March 1988
- Gill – Zybach 2 May 2014
- Knauf – Lavadour no date
- Nickell – Balmer 5 December 2016
- Vincent – Abdill 21 June 1974
- Whitters – Hyder 7 January 1993
- Zybach – Bogle 6 January 1991
Provenance
- Creator
- Dr. Bob Zybach; with Janet Meranda
- Transcriptions
- Jan and John Meranda
- Published at
- orww.org/History/Letitia_Carson/Library/
- Described
- By the Library, 4 September 2026, from the creator’s file listing and from the text layer of the PDFs that have one
- Not reproduced
- Every work by anybody other than the creator and the Merandas
