Library Research Guide for History

Travel books (first person accounts of travels) and guidebooks offer descriptions of particular places at particular times.

Find travel accounts in HOLLIS by searching the standard subject terms: “Description and Travel” Guidebooks

Bowen's picture of Boston, or The citizen's and stranger's guide to the metropolis of Massachusetts, and its environs .., by Abel Bowen. Boston : J. Munroe and Co., 1849.
Subject: Boston (Mass.) -- Guidebooks.

A trip to Boston, in a series of letters to the editor of the United States gazette, by E. C. Wines. Boston, C. C. Little and J. Brown, 1838.
Subject: Boston (Mass.) -- Description and travel.

You can limit by date, but this may exclude books written well after the time of the visit.

You can use HathiTrust Digital Library to find mentions of particular persons, places etc. in travel books. In HathiTrust Advanced Full Text search, put "Loie Fuller" (the dancer) as a  phrase in the Full Text box and Paris Description as Subject, all of these words, in the next box. For full text searches, phrases (for example proper names) work best, as multiple separate keywords can occur on different pages.