,,,An Unknown 1859 Notaries' Ledger from Douglas County, Kansas

One of the advantages of being a legal historian is the need and pleasure to search out documents relevant to one’s research no matter where they may be. During my early career, when I focused on the history of Roman and medieval legal history, these searches took place primarily in museums and archives, often in rather wonderful places such as Paris, Rome, and the Vatican. When I began teaching law in the U.S. and researching American legal history at the University of Illinois College of Law, I found myself visiting obscure small towns in central and southern Illinois searching out letters and documents for the Lincoln Legal Papers Project. When I moved to the University of Kansas School of Law in 1994, I decided to begin to research Kansas legal history. Over the past two decades this research has led to a number of published papers as well as a book on the history of the Federal District Court in Kansas.2 Over the years that I have been doing research on Kansas legal history, I have not only scoured all of the available libraries and archives in the state relevant to the subject, but I have also made it a habit to attend estate auctions and book sales which might contain relevant unknown materials. I have had a number of successes in these outings, including the discovery of a one volume diary kept by Kansas Supreme Court Justice Daniel Mulford Valentine3 which contained the only known contemporary manuscript account of Abraham Lincoln’s visit to and speech at Leavenworth, Kansas in 1859.