Samuel Frank Dexter papers

Letters, diaries, essays, and other papers of Samuel Frank Dexter. The large portion of the collection consists of the letters that Dexter wrote to his children during the 1901 trip to California. Before moving to Los Angeles in 1902, Dexter and his wife took a trip to California in 1901 leaving their children in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. An expansive and consistent writer, his almost daily letters home to his children describe in minute detail their experiences and observations of various parts of California such as Alameda County, Bakersfield, Kern County, La Jolla, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Mount Lowe, Pasadena, Redlands, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Gabriel, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz County, and Santa Monica. Other places of interest that Dexter wrote about to his children include the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, descriptions of the California coast, and accounts of a trip taken in North Mexico. He also wrote frequently along their railroad trip to California, describing such places as Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, and Iowa. A noted naturalist and authority on ornithology, Samuel Frank Dexter and his friend Anthony (Gideon Anthony) Hamilton traveled to Sequoia National Park, California, in 1902. Included in this collection is the diary that Dexter kept during their excursion. Other correspondence came from Mattie J. Chase, who along with her family, lived in Vienna, Austria and wrote to her sister Anna Fannie Dexter detailing their life there. In addition to being a prolific letter writer, Dexter wrote a couple of essays that describe and illuminate life in Charleston, South Carolina and Rhode Island.