Statements and recollections of Julia Ann Stinson, wife of Thomas Nesbit Stinson. Julia was born in 1834 at the Shawnee Methodist Indian Mission where she was raised and educated. It was there that she met Thomas Stinson and married him in 1850. A photograph taken on her wedding day is believed to be the first photographic portrait taken west of the Missouri River. Her husband was adopted into the tribe and the couple received a land grant of about 800 acres from a treaty between the U.S. government and the Shawnee Indians. The Stinson's made their home on the land they acquired through the Shawnee settlement. Julia Stinson claimed a relationship to the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh. Shawnee Indians supposedly kidnapped her grandfather who married a cousin of Tecumseh. This is how the future town earned its name. The couple built a home there, established a profitable trading post and ran a post office. Included in these documents are reminiscences of encounters with Andrew Reeder, Chief Abram Burnett, and John C. Fremont.