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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
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San Marino, CA 91108
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Journal of Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Vose, April-July, 1776
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Rare Books
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Manuscripts
This journal consists of lines composed by Joseph Cleary on board the Barque Sarmiento during her voyage from Panama to San Francisco, California. Cleary's voyage is told in twenty-seven eight line stanzas, rhymed A B A B, with a four line chorus after each stanza. While more or less honoring the formal requirements of the poem, he manages to report on the ship, the weather, food, sanitation, officers, crew, lack of water, and his fellow passengers. "The rats which in them got / The rankiest odor up did send / As they did slowly rot...With worms our bread was all alive / Our beef & pork did stink / Though it to eat we still did not starve." Death is a also grim reality, "And most of us are yet alive / Though eight are with the dead." In verse twenty, the crew reaches Honolulu, Hawaii, and remains there until verse twenty-five. "But since the Sandwich Isles we've seen / The time does not seem long / For we much better fed have been...Whilst daily we expect to land / And leave this hateful ship." After the twenty-seven line stanzas, there is a bawdy poem about lice feeding in a mining camp, which is written in mirror image cursive. The next poems are titled, "The Miners Prayer," "Epitaph on a Chinese Grave," and "A description of the view from the western summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains." "Those mighty Nevadas with steep and rugged fronts lifted high their lofty brows: peering the ethereal Regions of snows eternal...Overlooking the western world: which from here Presents to the beholder a scene in All its bearings truly wonderful and Sublime." His description of the mountains is followed by a note about Penn Valley, California, on April 27, 1854, "A Miner's Surprise," "A trip to the summit of a mountain near Coloma, Eldorado [El Dorado] County, California," and a long poem to "My Dear Sister." He addresses his sister, "I look upon Ohio now / As a poor place to be hoe and plow / And poorer still to gather wealth / And worse by far respecting health / I almost dread to venture back / Least some disease my frame should rack." There are also acrostics spelling, "Elisabeth Dickson," "Maptha Dickson," "Mary Meguire," and "Catherine Mulholland." The final poem in this volume is titled, "Woman." "They're always trying to employ / Their time in vanity and prate / Their leisure hours in social joy / To spend is what all women hate."
mssHM 80821
Manuscripts
A ledger containing miscellaneous writings by Joseph Norris penned between 1723 and 1733. After Norris's death, the book was apparently taken over and continued by his brother Isaac Norris (1701-1766), and then by Isaac Norris's daughter Mary Norris Dickinson (1740 - 1803).
mssHM 164
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Manuscripts
The journal that Jeunot kept during his service in the West India Islands and Virginia. The manuscript contains detailed information on vessels of the French fleet, the combined French and Spanish fleets, together with a list 124 English vessels, and gives detailed accounts of the French operations at Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Kitts, Tobago, and St. Christopher as well as a long account of the engagement in Chesapeake Capes (Sept. 5, 1781). The manuscript also includes the Articles of Capitulation of the Islands of Tobago and St. Christopher, as well as the "Capitulation of York in Virginia made between Lord Cornwallis Commander General of the British Troops in Virginia and Maryland..." and a list of the French regiments engaged in the siege of Yorktown, together with a list of the ships engaged and the names of their commanders. Also included are contains directions for making fuses, disquisitions of the artillery employed in the French fleet, some poems, religious reflections, scattered daily entries penned in the early 1800s (in a different hand), etc.
mssHM 578
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Rare Books
25755
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Rare Books
621360