After teaching for thirty years in North Dakota, Eva Nelson wrote her memoirs, starting with her earliest recollections and continue in great detail until 1940. From 1940 to the late 1950s, she provides highlights of her activities rather than the detailed description of everyday life found in the first narratives. In the last three chapters of her narrative, Eva gives a synopsis of her life from the mid-1950s to the early 1990s. She used her diaries, surviving letters, and her memory to create the narrative. These diaries and other supporting papers were later donated and processed as Manuscript collection 293.