Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
A political manual for 1866 [to 1869]
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Rare Books
21042
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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.
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Manuscripts
A collection of 1,072 items from 1815 to 1939, it consists of letters, manuscripts, documents, and two scrapbooks related to the lives and family of Harriet Williams Russell Strong and Charles Lyman Strong. There is material related to mining in Virginia City, Nevada, from 1860 to 1867 and Galena, Nevada, from 1877 to 1880; Hardyville and La Paz, Arizona; and California. There is some material related to the activities of Harriet Strong's father, Henry Pierrepont Russell, in the militia in Nevada; this material includes some references to Native Americans. Of note is one letter from Orion Clemens (brother of Mark Twain) appointing Samuel Andrew Russell to the Nevada Militia in 1863. The subject of California politics appears in the letters of Harriet's sister, Catherine Hundley, and her husband, Patrick Oglesby Hundley; he was a member of the California state assembly from 1860 to 1861 and elected superior court judge of Butte County, California, in 1879. There is also material related to the education of women on the mining frontier, as reflected in letters by Harriet Strong and her friends written from Miss Atkin's Young Ladies Seminary at Benicia, California. Later material relates to California horticulture, flood control, irrigation, and water conservation during the years that Harriet Strong managed the family's property in Whittier, California. The collection also contains some papers related to George Crockett Strong, Civil War general and brother of Charles Lyman Strong.
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