Wylly's 205 page narrative begins with his eighteenth year and ends with his return from Central America to Georgia (1853). His grandson, Thomas Spalding Wylly III, has provided another hundred pages or so of supplementary notes based partly on family oral tradition and partly on reading and on-site research. There are two typescript copies of the narrative. An unbound copy is con-tained in five numbered folders, while a second version, together with eight photographs, a map and Mr. Wylly III's notes, is bound in navy blue cloth with the title "'Westward Ho --in '49': Memoirs of Captain Thomas S. Wylly" embossed in gold on the cover.

Thomas Spalding Wylly (1831-1922) was born and raised in coastal Georgia. As an adolescent he read Fremont's accounts of his exploits in the West and resolved to go there himself. His grandfather, Thomas Spalding, was a rich and powerful man who knew Fremont's father-in-law, Thomas Hart Benton. Spalding arranged for Wylly to meet Fremont at Benton's home in Indepen-dence, Missouri. When, in the spring of 1849, Wylly arrived at Independence, he found a cholera epidemic raging and both Ben-ton and Fremont gone. Undaunted, he joined a wagon train and came to California by way of Utah and the Mojave Desert, arriving in April 1850.

Collection is open for research.