Henry David Cooke papers

A collection containing 169 items; mssHM 47644-47748: Personal and professional correspondence of Henry D. Cooke. Included are the correspondence, deeds, bonds, agreements, contracts, accounts, and other financial and business records. The correspondence with Laura S. Humphreys Cooke and John Sherman constitute two larger groups of letters. Other correspondents include James Gillespie Blaine, Salmon Portland Chase, Jay Cooke, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Julia Dent Grant. The letters cover Cooke's travels in Panama and Chile, life in California (including news of the gold discovery), his political activities, business interests, and family matters. Also included are: a political cartoon entitled "The exhausted receiver," by J.P. Davis and S. Peer, Cyrus West Field's proposal on "the establishment of a submarine telegraph communication between the West coast of America and the eastern shores of Russia, China, etc." addressed to Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, and a contract and specifications for an organ for St. John Episcopal Church in Georgetown (1870) commissioned by Cooke to Henry Erben. The ephemera contains visiting cards, invitations, receipts, tax forms, stock certificates, etc. There is also the 1956 correspondence of his grandson Henry Dave Cook with Leslie Edgar Bliss, the Librarian of the Huntington Library, regarding possible acquisition of Henry D. Cooke's papers.

MssHM 83873: This diary belonging to Henry D. Cooke, documents his trip to Europe in the spring and summer of 1864, including a fundraising effort to finance the public debt of the United States. In 1937, Cooke's granddaughter, Eleanor Cooke Pearson, took the same diary to describe a trip from San Pedro, California to Europe. Includes transcriptions of the diary. MssHM 83874: This printed form signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, appoints Henry D. Cooke as Governor of District of Columbia in 1871. Printed form filled in; with seal.