Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Fred Douglass and his mule ; a story of the war
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Rare Books
Image not available
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Visual Materials
A personal photograph album of 104 images with handwritten captions chiefly depicting Chester A. Thomas (1874-1920) and Thomas family members between 1892 and 1898 in mining camps in Nevada (pages 1-29); at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California (pages 30-33); visiting Harvard University and Cambridge, Massachusetts (pages 38-49); and at Camp Merritt at the Presidio, San Francisco, in 1898 (pages 33-37 and 50-65). The album includes 20 cyanotype photographs (12.5 x 16.5 cm) of the mining camps in Virginia City and Sutro, Nevada (where Thomas's father, Charles Thomas, was superintendent of the Sutro tunnel), including: mining equipment, miners, locomotive cars, interior views of the mine shaft, buildings and mules. Some of the images are of Camp Merritt, at the Presidio in San Francisco, California, where California volunteers assembled in May-June 1898 for transport to the Philippines during the Spanish American War. Thomas, a member of Company K of the United States Cavalry Volunteers, is depicted as well as other soldiers, including members of the 51st Iowa Volunteers.
photCL 144
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Manuscripts
The collection contains Frank F. Latta's research material from his five decades of researching the history of California's San Joaquin Valley and Miller & Lux, in particular dry farming known as skyfarming. Subjects include: agriculture and farming in the San Joaquin Valley, the development of agricultural machinery (combines, plows, reapers, scrapers, threshing machines, tractors and various types of harvesters), livestock, ranches, cattle, and crops, mostly wheat. Also covered are: early aviation, early automobiles, bears, crime, the Dalton Gang, the Donner Party, earthquakes, education and schools in the San Joaquin Valley, floods, freight and steamships on the San Joaquin River, gold mines, irrigation, canals and water rights in San Joaquin Valley, land grants, livestock, lumber, outlaws, pioneers, the Presbyterian Church in California, ranches, rivers, roads, saddlery, sheepherding in California, overland journeys to California and California politics, government and history. Also talked about are women, African Americans, Chileans, Chinese, Mormons, Native Americans and Jews in California. The collection contains roughly 180 oral interviews with people living in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1930s through the 1970s. One of the series contains drafts of the unpublished manuscript Sky Farmers and Mule Skinners with Something about Hay Muckers, Buckaroos, and Bindle Stiffs and a Sheepherder or Two. Frank F. Latta worked on this manuscript for five decades.
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