Manuscripts

Diary of a sparrowhawk

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Description: Manuscript hawking diary, detailing the short life of "Joan," a young sparrowhawk, from October 22, 1894 to her death on February 19, 1895. Each individual flight is noted and killed birds are listed. Also, an 8 page shooting diary for the same period, detailing kills and their location.
Type: Manuscripts(Opens in new tab)
Production date: 1892-1895.
Call number: mssHM 72180
Provenance: Purchased from Ken Spelman Rare Books Ltd, November 2002.
Dimensions: 80 x 13 cm
Find out more: View in the Library catalog

V. Swanson diary and last will

Manuscripts

Diary and last will of V. Swanson covering the period from October 4, 1917 to April 20, 1918. Entries describe game killed, weather, declining health, the making of clothes and usefuls, and mishaps on the river. Swanson was suffering from illness, snow blindness, exposure and starvation and ended the diary with a short, signed last will. His body was found by the undersigned Fred Eastrow and his partner Harry Trefzger on August 18, 1918.

mssHM 14183

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Mary J. Colson diary of a whaling voyage in South American waters

Manuscripts

Diary of Mary J. Colson, a ship captain's wife, chronicling a whaling voyage in the South Atlantic Ocean off the coasts of Argentina and Uruguay from October 1877 to December 1880. Colson provides details on the weather, food, and other ships encountered, noting numerous social visits with other ship captains and sometimes their wives. She describes frequent whaling activities, noting whales sighted, chased, and killed, and the boiling of whales aboard ship with the amount of oil extracted often mentioned. Colson's entry of January 13, 1878, details the killing of a right whale that happened near the ship. She refers to several accidents, mishaps, and deaths during the voyage, and to an outbreak of scurvy. There are a few trips onshore--to Port Stanley, Falkland Islands and to Montevideo, Uruguay--but none are described in detail. Also mentioned are reports and letters from home received from other ships, and notable events such as birthdays and holidays. The journal ends on December 18, 1880. At the end of the volume is a two-page account of whales killed and amounts of oil extracted, dating from December 9, 1877 to January 26, 1881, a note about a steamship dated April 18, 1881, and notes and calculations. The journal is written in pencil and is in a bound volume with numerous blank pages; the back inside cover has four small ink prints depicting sperm whales. Also present are two cabinet card portraits: one presumably of Mary J. Colson dated October 1, 1879 and one presumably of Herbert D. and Mary J. Colson, undated. Both photographs were taken at Chute & Brooks studio, Montevideo, Uruguay. In addition, there is a souvenir album of illustrated scenes of Montevideo titled "Album de Montevideo publicado por la Libreria Alemana Buenos Aires" (9 x 13 cm) with captions in English, Spanish, French, and German. An annotated transcript of the diary is available (mssHM 26611 (FAC)), which was created by Joan Druett, author of Petticoat Whalers: Whaling Wives at Sea, 1820-1920 (2001), in 1991.

mssHM 26611

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Sara J. Ballard diary

Manuscripts

The diary begins with Ballard's trip from Maine to California in September 1892. Along the way she stops in Chicago to see the World's Columbian Exposition and while in California she visits Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, San Diego and Palm Springs. In her entries, she gives details regarding the sights she sees, such as her visits to several of the Spanish missions, and the people she meets. She seems to have left to go back home in May 1893. The diary picks back up in 1894 when Ballard is back in San Francisco, and in the last entry dated August 26, 1895, she is still in northern California.

mssHM 64275

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Edward Meyer Kern diary

Manuscripts

Diary of the first part of Frémont's fourth expedition from October 8 through November 11, 1848.

mssHM 4154

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Edward Meyer Kern's diaries

Manuscripts

Diary of the first part of Frémont's fourth expedition from October 19 through November 9, 1848. The second diary contains an account of his trip with John Pope's reconnaissance from Santa Fé.

mssHM 4275-4276

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Strang family diaries

Manuscripts

Series of seventeen diary volumes written by members of the Strang family between 1878 and 1910. Ten of the diaries were written by Alice Margaret Strang in Los Angeles, California, from 1895-1910, when she was between the ages of twelve and twenty-seven. Her nearly daily diary entries focus on her family, friends, school attendance, church and religious activities, and travel by train to the east coast (to the World's Fair in St.Louis in 1904 and to a church conference in Pittsburgh in 1909). Alice also includes references to various political events, including the outbreak of the Spanish-American War (1895-1901 diary), the election of William McKinley (1895-1901 diary) and a series of entries on his assassination (1901-1902 diary), the death of Queen Victoria (1895-1901 diary), the inauguration of William Howard Taft (1909 diary), and the bomb attack on the Los Angeles Times building (1910 diary). Five of the other diaries were written by Alice's father Robert Edwin Strang between 1876 and 1909 in Marshalltown, Iowa, while traveling throughout the eastern United States, and in Los Angeles. His diaries focus on expense accounting and his daily activities, and his 1876 diary recounts in detail his travels through Cincinnati, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, including detailed descriptions of the Smithsonian Institution and other landmarks in Washington, D.C. There is also a single diary written by Alice's mother, Harriet Lemert, in Marshalltown from 1878-1879 and which includes comments on her daily activities. Also included with the collection is an autograph book belonging to Robert Strang (1876-1878), which includes entries from friends in Iowa, New York, Colorado, and Ohio, and two photographs of Alice Strang (one taken c.1900 and the other around the time of her marriage in 1910). All of the volumes are bound.

mssHM 73035-73053

Diary of a sparrowhawk

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You might also be interested in

V. Swanson diary and last will

Mary J. Colson diary of a whaling voyage in South American waters

Sara J. Ballard diary

Edward Meyer Kern diary

Edward Meyer Kern's diaries

Strang family diaries