Dwight Bartlett letters to family

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  Daniel Bartlett Beard letter to Allen Frost

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  Five page letter by Daniel Bartlett Beard to ornitholgist Allen Frost. In the letter he talks about his job at Everglades, birds he sees, and national parks in general. The letter was written from Coral Gables, Florida, on "United States Department of the Interior National Park Service" letterhead.

  mssHM 82586

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  John Russell Bartlett letter to D.C. Goddmer

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  John R. Bartlett gives details of his duties related to his role in the Mexican Boundary Commission.

  mssHM 4016

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  Humphrey Griffith letters to family

  Manuscripts

  Letters from Humphrey Griffith to his mother Mary and brother Reece, written from 1849 to 1857 and covering Griffith's travels to California and his life and experiences there. The letters begin in St. Louis, where Humphrey was waiting to depart for California with a large number of other immigrants ("the merchants do know a Californian as soon as they see him," he wrote), and trace his travels through Indian Territory (he wrote to his mother of his well-being and religious faith, noting that "God is great - he is the same God on the prairie or in the Temple"), his stops at Scott's Bluffs, Castle Bluffs, and Chimney Rock (where he inscribed his name "some 200 feet up"), and his encounters with Sioux Indians near Chimney Rock, where they "came in and we had a village of fifty lodges containing near a thousand Indians." The rest of the letters were written from California, and Humphrey specifically writes of his initial situation in Washington, agriculture, the price of goods, the uncertain nature of his business ventures, damaging rain and flooding (1852), his election to the California legislature (1853), and his canvassing activities for James Buchanan (1856). He also writes of family matters, including his love for his fiancé Helen, whose parents opposed her moving to California, his marriage to a woman named Cordelia (1852), and his grief over the death of their 2-year-old daughter Laura from typhoid in 1857. The final letter was written by Humphrey's friend Joseph J. Underhill to Mary Griffith following Humphrey's death in 1865.

  mssHM 74800-74815

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  Ella P. Starkweather letter to "Mrs. Dwight and Family,"

  Manuscripts

  This letter was written by Ella P. Starkweather, a school teacher, living in the town of Bridgewater, now part of South Dakota. Starkweather describes her experiences in Dakota Territory to her friends back home. To her surprise, she likes the school where she is teaching. There are new series of books, a school room that is large and pleasantly furnished. She writes that some of her students could benefit from a lesson on cleanliness: "...a few would be rendered much more attractive by a vigorous application of soap suds..." Regarding life on the frontier, she writes: "You may imagine the people here are sick of the country, and I can hardly give you an idea how happy and contented they all seem to be. They say the most scant time for provisions they have known is since I came and I know of no one suffering." She also touches upon the weather and the farmers. "The country looks lovely, farmers who had seed here and sown find everything encouraging." Near the end of the letter, she describes her layover in Sheldon, Iowa for five days and her amusement regarding a car half-filled with Bohemian immigrants.

  mssHM 80839

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  Letters of Hiram Dwight Pierce and related documents [microform] : 1849-1850

  Manuscripts

  Microfilm of typescript letters from Hiram Dwight Pierce to his wife Sarah Jane Palmer, letters from Sarah to Hiram, notes from the Geneva Gazette, portions of Pierce's 1850 diary, and biographical notes and anecdotes by his grandson. The first few frames are of extracts of the Geneva Gazette from 1848-1849 recounting gold digging in California, specifically mentioning the Ontario Trojan Band and the Rensselaer County Exploring Company. The next portion of the film is entitled "Letters of a Forty-Niner, Hiram Dwight Pierce of Troy, N.Y. to his wife, Sarah Jane Pierce." The letters, written from March 1849-October 1850, recount Pierce's experiences traveling to California and digging for gold in the Maricopa area. Pierce gives detailed descriptions of sailing along the coast of Florida to Havana on the mail steamer Falcon; of stopping in New Orleans; of departing Chagres, Panama, on the steamer Orus, traveling across the Isthmus, and staying for several weeks in Panama while waiting for the Falcon to return (he eventually sailed to San Francisco on the Sylph in late July); of his stay in San Francisco, where he reflected on his religious convictions and noted the plurality of cultures around him ("You cannot name a County or an Island that is represented with all their peculiarity of dress and custom," he wrote to Sarah, "Some of them most ridiculous in the extreme"); mining for gold at Mormon Island in August 1849; going to Maricopa in January 1850 ("I have felt very uneasy about being 7 1/2 months from home and yet having done nothing for myself worth naming," he lamented); of gold mining at Washington Flat and Long Canyon; and of returning to San Francisco in October 1850 and planning his voyage home. The next portion of the microfilm is entitled "Letters of Sarah Jane Pierce to her Husband, Hiram D. Pierce," and includes several letters Sarah sent to Hiram from May 1849-August 1850, mostly recounting conditions at home. The "Story of Grandfather's Diary" by Pierce's grandson Warren Travell (son of his eldest daughter Elvira) gives biographical notes on Pierce, an account of finding his diary, and an anecdote on Pierce's homecoming in 1851. The "Diary of H.D. Pierce" is incomplete, and although it includes some brief daily entries from about 1850, it mainly consists of extracts such as the prices of goods in California ("Forty-Niner Prices") and a list of people named in the original diary. The microfilm ends with an 1849 letter from Geneva Gazette writer George R. Parburt (who went by the pseudonym LUOF) to Gazette editor S.H. Parker, which recounts Parburt's voyage of the ship Sylph and a brief account by physician James L. Tyson of conditions in the gold fields in 1850.

  MSS MFilm 00044

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  Frank Hubbard letters to family

  Manuscripts

  These seven letters were written by Frank Hubbard to his family back in New Jersey. The letters are addressed to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Hubbard, and his brother William C. Hubbard. Hubbard wrote these letters from Colorado Springs and Denver, Colorado. He talks about trying to find employment, traveling in the area, going to social events, etc. He also mentions that observing the Sabbath is making it difficult to find a job. Hubbard also talks about perhaps going further west to Wyoming or Nevada.

  mssHM 78272-78278