A typed carbon copy of the reminiscences and diary (October 1884-March 1885) of Aaron Raymond Russell, of Fisher, Minnesota. The reminiscences deal with Russell's experiences in his boyhood home of Utica, Pennsylvania; his trips on the Allegheny River (1840); the Mississippi River; his many types of employment in the Midwest; and his arrival in Minnesota in the late 1840s. Russell lived in various places in Minnesota: St. Paul, Henderson, Albion, and Fisher; and was engaged in many types of work: farming, carpentering, operator of a sugar camp, and river piloting. As a river pilot he was employed for a time by William F. Davidson and later operated his own steamboat line, which competed with Davidson's on the Minnesota River. In the late 1880s he also worked for Canadian steamboat companies that operated on the Red River of the North, the Assiniboine, and the Saskatchewan Rivers.
