Cynthia:

Good news and bad news!

First, Howard Duncan contacted me directly, and gave me a thorough run-down on the Lecompton Reenactors, including a script. According to Howard, who was already familiar with Pelot, he is cast as a Southern moderate in the play -- a thoughtful, literate man, certainly with Southern sympathies, but not a fire-eater, as there were too many of on both sides of the tragedy in Kansas. He reguarlly visits the Kansas Board, and I would suggest that you contact him through the Kansas Board. I know that he would be delighted to hear from you. From what Howard told me, he was not familiar with the letters which I posted, because they were sent back to S.C. Obviously there are other source materials of which Howard was aware to shed more light on Dr. Pelot.

Now for the bad news. I do have very good access to microfilm sources, and I have nbot kept copies of the newspaper articles; I just pack them up as I process them (some I have not posted), and periodically mail the batches to Margaret Knecht, the Chief Librarian at KHS. The only two locations for me to get duplicate copies are an hour and a half to two hours away, either at the University of Georgia, which only has the Charleston newspapers, or at the Greenville (S.C.) County Library, which has a much more extensive South Carolina newspaper collection. But the Abbeville papers, in which the bulk of Dr. Pelot's letters appear, are in yet a third library. I wonder if the Missouri Historical Society would take transcriptions. I apologize for my occasional (or maybe frequent) misspellings. Why don't you check with them, and then let's plot out some strategy. I agree with you that Missouri has a good claim to him as well. At the time I began this "project," I was not aware that Dr. Pelot ended up in Missouri. Howard alerted me to that fact, but I knew very little on him until your fortuitous postings on this Board.
Regards, Lee