A volume containing two major segments:

1) John Redd papers. Redd (1755-1850), born in Orange County, Virginia, moved in 1774 to Henry County, where he was living when Draper learned of him. In the Revolution he served under Brice Martin and Nathanael Greene and later had two terms in the Virginia legislature (1795-1796, 1798-1799). Redd's detailed reminiscences, recorded as replies to Draper's questionnaires in 1848-1849, have become known as the “Redd narrative.” In his account he discussed the settlement of Powell's Valley and the Cherokee campaign in 1776 as well as many other frontier incidents in which he had participated. His personal recollections of Daniel Boone, William Campbell, William Christian, George Rogers Clark, Benjamin Cleveland, Mordecai Hord (Hoard), Joseph Martin, John Montgomery, Thomas Walker, and members of such families as the Bledsoes, Callaways, and Shelbys show his wide acquaintance with border leaders and settlers.

Some portions of Redd's answers were dictated to or copied by a member of his family, but other parts are in Redd's own handwriting. Accompanying the letters exchanged between Draper and Redd are copies of his pension applications. After Draper's death sections of Redd's recollections or “narrative” were printed (but with some errors, omissions, or variations) in Publications of the Southern Historical Association, VII (1903) and in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, VI and VII (1898-1900).

2) Nathan Reid papers. Of Irish parentage, Reid (1753-1830) was born in Virginia, and in 1774 joined an older brother in the Indian trade on the Holston River. Two years later he went with John Floyd to Kentucky and was in Boonesborough during the troubled summer of 1776. Later he served in the Continental Army in engagements at Brandywine and Stony Point. After the Revolution he settled permanently in southwestern Virginia. In 1849 Reid's son, also named Nathan, compiled a biographical narrative about his father for Draper; in it were incorporated copies of some of the elder Reid's letters and papers as well as transcripts of oral recollections recorded before his death. Included are many anecdotes about Boone, the Callaways, Clark, Floyd, and their contemporaries.

Also given to Draper was the surviving fragment of reminiscences by Floyd as recorded by a brother of the younger Nathan Reid; these few pages describe Floyd's capture by the British while he was on a slave trading voyage in the West Indies during the Revolution and his subsequent trial in England and escape to France. Separating the Redd and Reid sections of the volume is Draper's manuscript copy of an obituary (1832) of Thomas Sumter from the American Annual Register.