Morris Officer Diaries

Morris Officer was an African missionary and the founder of the Lutheran Church in Liberia. Educated at Wittenberg University in Ohio, Officer traveled and worked in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Gambia between 1853 and 1861. He established the Muhlenberg Mission, which became home to former slaves freed by the United States Navy. Officer published several books about West Africa and served as a home missionary in various locations prior to his death in 1874. His scrapbooks and diaries chronicle three decades of activities. A detailed biography is available here.

Officer’s diaries from 1848 through 1854 are available here.

Diaries covering 1852 through 1874 are available here.

Source: Thomas Library, Wittenberg University (Springfield, OH) and A.R. Wentz Library, Gettysburg Seminary (Gettysburg, PA)

Union Missionary

The Union Missionary is the successor journal to the Union Missionary Herald, which was posted in full on this site last year. The paper was the official organ of the Union Missionary Society, the predecessor of the American Missionary Association, and ran from May 1844 through September 1846. It carried news, correspondence, and other information connecting the United States of America to locations in Africa, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world. It is now available online, for the first time, here.

Source: Rare and Manuscript Collections, Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)