Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Travel diary of William Richardson from Boston to New Orleans by land, 1815
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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
Collection of four diaries kept by Mary Richardson, a cousin of English critic and artist John Ruskin, documenting travel primarily in France and Italy, between 1833 and 1841, with the Ruskin family, including John Ruskin. Richardson often describes the sites they visited, her perceptions, and the daily activities of the family during their tours of Europe. The volumes consist of a diary of travel chiefly in Italy, from May-September 1833 (HM 41910); a diary of travel chiefly in France from June 4-August 25, 1835 (HM 41911); a diary of travel in Rome and Naples from December 22, 1840, to March 11, 1841 (HM 41912); and a diary of travel in Italy from March 14-June 23, 1841 (HM 41913). The collection also contains one additional volume: a diary and appointment book of an unidentified individual, presumably a young man, in London, England, in 1849 (HM 41914).
mssHM 41910-41914
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Manuscripts
This diary was compiled by descendants of Thomas Richardson in 1838 and contains extracts of the letters, journals, and memoranda of Richardson from between 1780 and 1794. Thomas Richardson documented daily life in a prosperous Quaker household and records observations about education, religion, natural philosophy, abolitionism, and domestic medicine. There are accounts of electrical experiments and electrotherapeutic treatments conducted by the family, including a 1786 description of the Richardson family attempting to revive a recently dead woman using electric shocks. The diary also includes examples of children's writing, education, and intellectual life in late eighteenth-century England. The volume is written in a single copyist's hand and is bound in contemporary marbled paper over boards.
mssHM 84540
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Manuscripts
This collection contains 44 letters written by William Herries to his English relatives during his journey across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and his travels around America including Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Kentucky, the Indiana and Louisiana territories, New Orleans, and Spanish Florida. Herries writes about people he meets including President Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, James Wilkinson, and John Jacob Astor. He also describes his various economic endeavors including attempts as a fur trader, general merchant, trader of enslaved persons, and land speculator before his acquisition and operation of the Montesano plantation near Fort Baton Rouge and his eventual ruin following the short-lived West Florida Republic. There is a note from Charles Herries from approximately 1816 stating that he had recently received word that William Herries had died three or four years previously. An unsigned and undated note lists all of Herries's stops from New York to New Orleans.
mssHerries
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Rare Books
49547
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Manuscripts
Collection of miscellaneous papers and correspondence of William H. Richardson. The bulk of the collection consists of financial records -- bills, receipts, promissory notes, etc, including a few items that document sale of slaves. Also included are a few personal letters addressed to William H. Richardson that discuss political news, Washington Canal and Rhode Island State Lottery, bear hunting, and other subjects. Also included are a few documents issued by Richardson as Adjutant General of Virginia (1862), and a letter of his son, William H. Richardson, Jr. who served in the Confederate Army
mssBR Box 73 (2)