This month’s cover features a mid-1870s photograph of Mary “Mamie” Mead, second daughter of James R. Mead, one of the founders of Wichita, Kansas, and Martha “Mattie” Fabrique, whose father Andrew was the first doctor to practice in Wichita. The two were lifelong friends.

A grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission helped the Wichita State University Libraries Special Collections create a digital collection of 13,000 items selected from the papers of James R. Mead. Material in the collection documents Mead’s activities and insights as an explorer, hunter, trader, town builder, historian, state legislator, businessman and family member through correspondence, journals and memoirs, business records and account books, sketches of American Indian petroglyphs, photographs, maps, and news clippings, along with his writings on Kansas history, ethnology, and geography. The majority dates from Mead’s arrival in Kansas Territory in 1859 until his death in 1910. Learn more about the collection at https://cdm15942.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15942coll152.