Pioneer Life

Scope and Contents This collection contains correspondence between Oscar Lewis and his family in Tioga County, Pennsylvania. The letters are primarily to his wife Ida and detail the difficulties Lewis faced while living in North Dakota. Among the letters is one incorrectly dated September 38, 1889, describing the lynching of a man named Will Lycan. The proported lynching happened after Lycan supposedly burned down his employer's barn. Lewis's narrative of the event, and the event itself, is called into...