Manuscripts

Sir John Archer diary

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Description: One of several diaries and notebooks kept by Archer, the present volume includes a daily record of his activities with some information about each day's trials while Archer was on circuit in Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire,and Hampshire, some notes on case law, his expense accounts while on circuit, details of family and domestic matters, and his list of memorable events of the year.
Type: Manuscripts(Opens in new tab)
Production date: 1663.
Call number: mssHM 70160
Creator: Archer, John (1598-1682)(Opens in new tab)
Provenance: Purchased from John Hart Antiquarian Bookseller (catalog 78, lot 1), April 2007.

Kate Rennie Archer papers

Manuscripts

The collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, clippings, photographs, brief biographies and receipts. The correspondence is by far the largest component of the collection and contains both items written by, and items addressed to, Kate Rennie Archer. Included in the correspondence are two letters signed by the secretary of Madame Chiang Kai-shek and a single letter signed by the secretary to Queen Mary, wife of George V of Great Britain. All of the manuscripts in the collection are poems by Archer, and the remaining materials are items that were collected by Archer or that pertain to her life and interests. Issues addressed within the collection include Archer's writing as well as the work of other contemporary writers. Correspondents include Julia Cooley Altrocchi, Anne Archer, Douglas Archer, Sr., Douglas Archer, Jr., Jessica Pryce Arthur, Avonne Ballin, Grace Douglas Burlingame, Harry Edwards, Helen N. Faulkner, Jessamine S. Fishback, Adam L. Gowans, Ina Defoe Greathead, Dora Hagemeyer, Herbert Hoover, Cullen Jones, Florence R. Keene, Sarah Hammond Kelly, Frona Lane, Arthur L. Price, Jean C. Reade, Hattie Hecht Sloss, Sarah Wingate Taylor, Jennette Yeatman and Virginia Youngreen.

mssArcher

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John R. Robinson diary

Manuscripts

This diary, which is a bound typed transcript, was kept by John R. Robinson while traveling from New York City to Batopilas, Chihuahua, Mexico in 1861; it also includes his return trip through California and across the Midwest to his home in Ohio. Robinson was going to Mexico for Belden & Stearns, a corporation in New York who was interested in buying several mines in Batopilas. While on the journey he passed through several cities including Austin, TX; Cusihuiríachic, El Fuerte, Mazatlán, and San Blas, Mexico; San Francisco and Sacramento, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; and Omaha, NE. The diary gives a day-by-day account of his trip. Robinson details the people, scenery and hardships he and his group encountered on their trek. He also gives details regarding the process of surveying and purchasing mines, including the costs involved. The last twenty-eight pages of the diary were written on a journey from Mexico to New York City in 1873, while Robinson was returning to the United States with a load of silver.

mssHM 62476

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John Coyle Civil War diary

Manuscripts

A diary kept by John Coyle while serving as an agent of the United States Christian Commission from July to October, 1864. Daily entries give detailed accounts of Coyle's ministry in Alexandria, Virginia, including hospitals, churches, schools, and prisons and his encounters with the patients, physicians, nurses, preachers, congregants, students, and inmates; the accounts of his ministry to soldiers wounded in the battles of the Overland campaign include African-American troops. Coyle met with many African-American preachers, including Leland Warring, a former slave turned preacher, the founder of Alexandria's "contraband school." Waring autographed the front flyleaf of the diary commemorating their meeting. Coyle's descriptions of the city hospitals include accounts of the L'Ouverture Hospital for African-American troops. The entries also describe some sightseeing, including a day trip to Mount Vernon. Reverend Coyle found service in the field less satisfying, as he was mostly engaged in distributing goods and newspapers, with very few opportunities to preach, but he did take the time to visit neighboring communities.

mssHM 83835

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John Q. Cannon diary

Manuscripts

Carbon copy typescript of a diary kept by John Q. Cannon in 1881. The majority of the entries focus on Cannon's daily farm work and the activities and illnesses of his neighbors and relatives. Cannon also remarks on his work at proofreading, writing reviews of plays, getting news of James Garfield's election into the paper, and his father George Q. Cannon's difficulties in obtaining citizenship because there was no official record of his naturalization and "being a polygamist he cannot now become a citizen." The diary also covers his mission trip to England beginning in August 1881, and with particular reference to his search for possible relatives.

mssHM 27983

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The blue hammer : a Lew Archer novel

Rare Books

"The theft of a valuable painting. The long-ago disappearance of a famous artist. A murder as deceptive as magicians' illusion. A horrendous--but not buried--explosion of family hatred. These are the nerve centres of Ross Macdonald's new Lew Archer novel, the richest we have had from the author of 'the best detective novels ever written by an American' (New York Times)--a fusion of unfaltering suspense with dramatic revelation of the way lives are shaped and misshaped in the flow of time, in the hidden and dangerous emotional currents beneath the surface of family history. The time is now; the place, Southern California. The stolen canvas that Archer has been hired to retrieve is reputed to be the work of the celebrated Richard Chantry, who vanished in 1950 from his home in Santa Teresa. It is the portrait of an unknown woman--and on its trail Archer moves with edgy competence among the intrigues of dealers and collectors. Until suddenly he is drawn into a web of family complications and masked brutalities stretching back fifty years through a world where money talks or buys silence, where social prominence is a murderous weapon, where behind the plausible façades of homes not quite broken but badly bent, a heritage of lies and evasions pushes troubled men and woman deeper into trouble. And as he pursues the Chantry portrait--and the larger mystery of Richard Chantry--Archer himself is shaken as never before: Archer himself is shaken as never before: Archer, the solitary traveller, the loner who has through the years deliberately addressed himself to the deciphering of other people's lives, is thrust into an inescapable encounter with a woman who will complicate his own..."--Page [1].

636046

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John C. Palmer diary

Manuscripts

Palmer's diary gives detailed descriptions of the towns in Mexico in which his regiment passed and in which they camped, such as Monclova and Saltillo, Mexico, as well as the people he encountered along the way including some friends he knew before the war. Palmer often complains about marching, the camp conditions, the treatment of the volunteers by the regulars, and his commanding officers. He specifically mentions Captain Albert Pike, Major Solon Borland, Major General Zachary Taylor, Brigadier General John Wool, Colonel Archibald Yell, and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Palmer gives a detailed description of his experience in the Battle of Buena Vista and of the battlefield the morning after the battle

mssHM 63638

Sir John Archer diary

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Kate Rennie Archer papers

John R. Robinson diary

John Coyle Civil War diary

John Q. Cannon diary

The blue hammer : a Lew Archer novel

John C. Palmer diary