The Meyer Brothers Collection is drawn from the Meyer Brothers’ Store Records, held by the Hill Memorial Library at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The bulk of the letters were originally sent to the siblings Emanuel, Caroline, and Henry Meyer, who immigrated to the United States between 1855 and 1864, by their parents and other family members living in and near the small town of Lachen, in southwestern Bavaria.

The Benecke Family Papers, held by the State Historical Society of Missouri, contains several thousand items reflecting the lives of immigrants Louis Benecke (1843-1919) and his wife Josephine Amerlan Benecke (1845-1908), as well as the lives of their families, friends, and descendants. Josephine Amerlan Benecke was born in Prussia and married Louis Benecke in 1868, in New York. The digitized letters in this collection were sent to her by her relatives in Germany, above all her sisters Frieda Amerlan (a children's book author) and Auguste Amerlan Schorss. Please note that the digitizations are taken from photocopies of the original letters.