Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
The President's address for the year 1866-1867
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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
Manuscripts
A collection containing approximately 5000 items from 1809 to 1943; the main portion of the collection is the correspondence of several generations of the Waller family centering on Henry Waller, his parents, siblings, wife, children, friends, and business associates. The bulk of the collection consists of the correspondence between Henry Waller and his wife Sarah Bell Langhorne Waller and their children. The detailed letters describe their life in Kentucky and Chicago and discuss family matters; social news; their feelings for each other; their religious reflections (the Wallers were devout Presbyterians); parenting; schools; political affairs; legal practice; and business. Also included are a few pieces of political and legal correspondence, including individual letters by John Marshall, Garret Davis, and John J. Crittenden. Also included are Henry Waller's letters to his parents written during his studies at West Point from 1829 to 1833, and his travels, including a trip to his sister's plantation in Mississippi in 1835. The collection also contains letters addressed to Sarah Bell Langhorne Waller, including those from Confederate prisoners and their families. Also included are items related to the arrest and imprisonment of William S. Waller, letters from Maurice Waller, John Duke Waller, Henry Waller, Jr., and other children to their parents, a group of military records documenting Edward C. Waller's service in the Spanish American War, and genealogical materials. There is also a small group of private and professional correspondence of Henry Waller's father, William Smith Waller who, for more than forty years, served as cashier of the Bank of Kentucky. Included are two letters by George Madison describing the War of 1812 in Kentucky. Other correspondents include Henry Waller's sister Catherine Waller Carson and her husband James Green Carson, a planter who owned and operated Canebrake Plantation in Mississippi, and then Airlie Plantation in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Their letters describe life on the cotton plantations, including discussions of enslaved people. There are also letters written by members of other branches of the Waller family as well as the related families of Langhorne, Breckenridge, Marshall, and others.
mssWaller
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Manuscripts
A collection of material related to Benson John Lossing; the collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, diaries, notebooks, drawings, photographs, and ephemera. The correspondence includes letters written by Lossing, many illustrated with sketches, which he wrote to his family during his travels in preparation for his "Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution." There are also letters by Lossing, chiefly retained copies, to his scholarly associates and publishers. The miscellaneous material includes printed biographical pamphlets, a small scrapbook related to Lossing, genealogical materials concerning the Lossing and other related families, photographs, newspaper clippings, forms, and other ephemera. The collection also includes some unidentified and uncataloged manuscripts, drawings, photographs, sketches, notes, and ephemera.
mssLS1
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Manuscripts
The collection contains letters, letterbooks, documents, records, and manuscripts that document Barlow's legal, business, and political career, and his cultural and social pursuits. Barlow's legal and business papers constitute the bulk of the collection and cover 1855 to 1889. This portion of the collection deals with financing, building and management of railroads -- both Eastern and Western divisions of the Ohio and Mississippi, the Atlantic & Great Western, the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio, the Little Miami, the Columbus and Xenia, the Erie, and the New York, Erie & Western; Barlow's lobbying on behalf of Texas and Pacific Railroad Company and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company; his involvement in the affairs of the Tehuantepec railroad route in Mexico, mining promotions and operations, including the notorious Arizona diamond hoax; land speculation (farm lands in Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio and urban properties in St. Louis, Mo.); his patronage of the New York subway and telephone enterprises, and his part ownership of the New York World. Political and military correspondence and manuscripts cover Barlow's involvement in Democratic politics at both national and state levels, that started in 1856 and continued until his death. The papers deal with Barlow's role in the nomination of James Buchanan for President, 1856, and his administration; Democratic National Convention at Charleston, 1860; George McClellan's presidential bid, the National Union Club, congressional elections, Tilden, Hancock, and Cleveland campaigns, 1876 to 1886. This portion of the collection also contains reports from the Eastern theater of the Civil War that Barlow received from his agents in the field. Among the correspondents are William T. Sherman, and T.J. Barnett, a minor official at the Department of the Interior and the Washington correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce, who provided an insight into Lincoln's White House. Also included are items reflecting Barlow's role in social and cultural life of New York -- his friendship with William Cullen Bryant and Bret Harte, patronage of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Academy of Music, and the New York Historical Society, his collections of colonial Americana and rare books, etc. Correspondents include William Henry Aspinwall, Henry Douglas Bacon, T.J. Barnett, James Asheton Bayard, Jr., August Belmont, Judah Philip Benjamin, Montgomery Blair, William Montague Browne, Benjamin Franklin Butler, Roscoe Conkling, George Ticknor Curtis, John Henry Dillon, William Maxwell Evarts, Henry Harrisse, Ben Holladay, Hugh Judge Jewett, Clarence King, George Brinton McClellan, James McHenry, Manton Malon Marble, Thomas Alexander Scott, Horatio Seymour, William Davis. Materials created by US presidents in this collection include James Buchanan autograph letters signed to Samuel L.M. Barlow, 1867 May 2 and May 22; Grover Cleveland autograph letter signed to Samuel L.M. Barlow, 1884 October 12; Millard Fillmore autograph letter signed to Charles Day, 1870 October 12; Andrew Jackson autograph letter to Mahlon Dickerson, 1835 June 9; also present is a contemporary copy of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee special order to Thomas Mann Randolph Talcott regarding Confederate soldiers paroled at Appomattox, 1865 April 10.
mssBW