Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Manuscripts
A. J. Evans letters to George Washington Paschal
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Manuscripts
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Manuscripts
Three letters written by Herbert McLean to Bern Dibner. In one letter, dated 1954, November 24, Evans proposes that Dibner print a catalogue of 289 works that Evans and his colleagues at the University of California-Berkeley Institute of Experimental Biology have deemed "the chief works or classics in the history of science." In a letter dated 1955, June 18, Evans mentions a shipment of Burndy Library duplicates. An undated letter is a social invitation to Dibner. Also included is a photograph of Bern Dibner and Herbert Evans, taken at Evans's home and dated November, 1952; the photograph includes a handwritten caption by Evans on verso dated 1952, November 16.
mssHM 82735-82738
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Manuscripts
This letter concerns the American presidential election of 1876 and the implications for the United States in the international bond market of Samuel J. Tilden's presumed victory in that election. Evans writes, "I trust Mr. Tilden will feel advisability of still further reducing the interest on the govt loans there is no reason why more than 4% should be paid - if the proper means were taken to please the public and meet this requirement." Although Democratic Party candidate Tilden eventually lost the Electoral College vote to his Republican opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes, that decision had not yet been made at the time of this letter. Also referenced is the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway: "...high dividends in time of bad trade are generally ominous and the P + R seem fairly to have rushed to destruction."
mssHM 80838
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Manuscripts
The set consists of seven letters sent from Murland de Grasse Evans to his father while he was traveling throughout the United States in 1899, and one letter to shipping company president Bernard Baker in Baltimore in 1900. In the letters Evans describes his travels through Oregon, Washington, Quebec, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Colorado. He occasionally writes of the steamship business, noting that he was being looked after by "local bigwigs" and had received a large number of invitations to social functions. In an April 15 letter sent from Chicago he also discussed local dissatisfaction with the management of ships in London, growing steamboat markets in the southern United States, and of a pending Steamship Subsidy Bill before Congress. Most of his letters are devoted to describing the cities he visits and his observations about the American way of life. He praises transportation around the Great Lakes as the "secret of their thriving & growing industry," and after a stay in Detroit marvels that American cities "are so utterly unlike anything I have seen before - Large open avenues asphalted, lit by immense electric lights...it makes one feel as though our ordinary street lamps...were relics of the Middle Ages!" In the same letter he describes the "pulse of intrepid & ceaseless energy that beats in the hearts of this young American life," and that while many of the people he encountered made him "shudder at their frightful want of good breeding & good manners," they provided a "powerful stimulant" to those used to a more rigid class structure. "Here you are nobody no matter what your name is, and yet you are at the same time everybody," he concluded (Nov.4, 1899). He was not impressed by Chicago, which he believed was filled with corrupt government and police officials and "ruffians" with revolvers, and he summed up his experience there by writing that he had "never felt so unsafe anywhere" before (Nov.25, 1899). Other letters describe the scenery of Puget Sound, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Colorado; Evans's first experience in an American sleeping car while traveling to Quebec (he lamented of the lake of privacy and the fact that "we are all treated...like schoolboys by the conductor!"); compare gold mines in Colorado to those he had seen in South Africa; and touch briefly on his observations of the Boer War of 1899-1902. In the letter to Baker, who was president of the Atlantic Transport Company, Evans writes from Oregon that after traveling through the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia he has found a "promising attitude of these newer markets...and of the good openings for a steamship enterprise in the Pacific Ocean." He writes of establishing Portland as a major port for ships going to the Alaskan gold rush, as well as for more expanded trade in China, Japan, and Russia (Jan.12, 1900).
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Manuscripts
Mr. Austin writes of the possible annexation of Texas by the United States Congress.
mssHM 20712
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Manuscripts
Ringgold writes of military and general details in San Francisco. Of the Civil War, he writes "The war still drags, but I believe we have turned the fence corner and can see out of the woods." With one-page typescript.
mssHM 16738
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Manuscripts
The letter book contains typescripts of Cleophas' letters to his parents from 1904 to 1907 (the letters are bound out of order). He writes from Denver, Colorado; Spokane, and Rosalia, Washington; Post Falls, Idaho; Ogden, Utah; Portland and Pendleton, Oregon; San Francisco (after the earthquake), San Jose, Los Angeles and Fullerton, California; Hot Springs, Arkansas; Fort Worth, and San Antonio, Texas; and Monterrey, Mexico. In his letters he talks about the activities he does in each city; the work he does to earn money (he spends some time working with the Coeur D'Alene and Spokane Railroad and at a grocery store in Fullerton); relatives he visits; and the weather and geography of each location. He also talks more specifically about the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City; the Sidney Sloane murder case in Spokane as well as Indians he sees in Washington; the conditions of San Francisco since the 1906 earthquake; and his visit to the Alamo. In a letter dated 1906, August 18, Cleophas writes "I have fallen in love with the West since I have been here and I think it is the only place." He urges his parents to sell their property in Michigan and come West as well. With the letter book is a letter written by his brother Harry to their parents, Christmas 1896, and newspaper clippings about the drowning of both Harry and Cleophas.
mssHM 75102
mssHM 80005-80012