Scrapbook

Originally owned by R. G. Betsill, a physician in Pike County, Alabama, the volume records his patients' treatments and accounts from 1855. In 1866, Mary C. Kelly began using the small volume as a scrapbook, attaching newspaper clippings to the pages and obscuring Betsill's earlier entries; very few pages have complete information. Although a notation in the front of the notebook states that the scrapbook was compiled in 1866, some earlier poems related to James Buchanan's election are also included. Most of the included newspaper clippings are poems, many of which address political themes.