John Lyon's botany journal offers a record of travels in the eastern U.S. at the turn of nineteenth century. The volume includes memoranda dated 1799, with entries spanning 9/6/1802-8/6/1814. Lyon's entries document expenses—plants purchased and collected—with occasional notes about the places and peoples he encounters. Entries related to his travels in the eastern and southeastern U.S. record a visit to plantations (4/23/1803), an Indian settlement in Georgia (7/19/1803), and medical treatments for palsy, jaundice, and cancer (12/1/1808). Notably, Lyon discusses an albino slave in Athens, Georgia, as excerpted in Selected Quotations (9/25/1804). In the spring of 1806, he records travel to Dublin, Liverpool, and London. Thus, while the Lyon journal will certainly appeal to researchers exploring nineteenth century botany, they also feature content with wider appeal, such as U.S. slavery, transatlantic travel, indigenous trade, and antebellum medicine.
 

As secretary to John Anstey, Loyalists' Claims Commissioner, Robert Woodruff offers a detailed record of the U.S. in the early national period from the unique vantage of an English loyalist. His journal (1785-1788) documents his trip through the Northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and Southeastern states (as far south as Georgia). In his travels, Woodruff references many colonial leaders, including George Washington (10/27/1986), Samuel Vaughan (11/2/1786), and Benjamin Franklin (11/4/1786). Notably, Woodruff dines in house where "Lord Cornwallis in December 1776 held a council of war whether he should cross the Delaware to attack General Washington" (10/30/1786), witnesses Franklin's reelection as President of the Pennsylvania state house (11/4/1786), and mentions the American Philosophical Society (5/8/1787).