Digital Archives and Special Collections: Tyler Collection

This book is designed to remedy the historic neglect of the significant contribution made by African-Americans to the settlement and development of the West. The African-American western experience during the frontier era (1850-1912) is a story that is rich and diverse. The fifteen authors in this volume highlight many of the contributions African-American men and women made to the western frontier -- as miners, homesteaders, town builders, entrepreneurs, and ordinary, civic-minded citizens.

During a time fraught with changes and challenges, Victorian-era America relied on proscribed social rules of conduct to establish social stability, norms, and acceptability. This book provides an illuminating examination of the impact that violations of standards of etiquette play on the personal, social and professional life of the Methodist minister Theron Ware.

Woods County, Oklahoma, is showcased in images dating from 1894 to statehood in 1907. This time span covers the period of early settlement and the hardships of pioneers in a new territory. It includes the growth from a wide-open prairie to the beginnings of small towns and school districts, from mostly one-room schoolhouses to the Normal School for higher education, known today as Northwestern Oklahoma State University. People from all walks of life came to the Cherokee Outlet before the land run of 1893 and after. Those frontier inhabitants suddenly found themselves nearly alone on the wide expanse of prairie unbroken by a single building and with almost no trees. Early settlers came from across the country and even from across the ocean, many with nothing but the clothes on their backs and hope. These new residents carved out a living and made Woods County what it is today.