Afternoon, This posting will be somewhat different from my previous offerings. In the past it has been my habit and wont to take the time to OCR, check for accuracy and then post those items I was submitting for your perusal. However, this item would have presented several hurdles that, to be blunt, I was just not willing to tackle. Chief amongst these was that the quality of the text on the nearly 164 year old newspaper was not conducive to my OCR program. Thus you will be getting it as is. In my large collection of materials I have many items that are not German Baptist Brethren related. This includes many items of the German Reformed Church of which the primary collection is some 40 or so volumes of their various newspapers. The years covered begin in the early 1830s and extend up into the 1880s with some being in the German language. To acquire this extensive collection of original material required two trips of around 500 miles each because of the dimensional sizes of the material. The two trips were needed for the simple fact that they would not fit in our trunk and back seat. Many of the volumes measure somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 X 25 with some exceeding this size. The deal made was such that I was required to go through and extract the obituaries in the various volumes. It was either this or the individual was going to take scissors to the pages to get what they wanted. I just could not stand to see this happen. Originally my plan was to get the funds to purchase a scanner, and remember the size as stated above, and then begin scanning the pages. Obviously no opportunities have presented themselves for this to have happened. So if anyone has access to a very large color scanner and would be willing to loan it on a semi-permanent basis to get this archival project going, please contact me. I will not be holding my breath. <grin> Now to todays posting. While going through a volume I happened to notice something that interested me, generally I avoid scanning the pages with my eyes, and thought you might be interested as well. This clipping, click <http://brethrenarchives.com/newspapers/12-2-2295.pdf> here to view it, discusses the proposed railroad from the Mississippi River to the state of Oregon. Please do not quote me but I believe this would have been the beginning of the Union Pacific Rail Road. Not being a railway historian I cannot be sure of this but it seems to fit with information at Wikipedia concerning Asa Whitney and the Union Pacific Railroad. Perhaps there is a person on the list more familiar with this aspect of our national history. The clipping also contains an article concerning the recent, as of 1846, formation of the states of Iowa and Wisconsin. This clipping is two scans stitched together and represents about one-quarter of the overall page. Even cropped this clipping measures 5½ X 22¾ so this gives you somewhat of an idea of what the entire page would measure. In case the PDF does not open at a good resolution for you to read I leave it to you to figure that aspect on your own. <g> Regards, Wayne Webb