This collection contains family letters of the Chicago journalist Hermann Raster, who emigrated from Germany in the wake of the upheaval of 1848 and was an active supporter of the United States during the Civil War. The collection largely includes letters Hermann sent to his sister, Sophie Raster, who lived in the town of Zerbst in Anhalt, and letters exchanged by Hermann Raster and his wife Margarethe Oppenheim Raster with her mother, Anna Oppenheim, who lived in Dessau.