Dwight Plympton Conklin correspondence

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  Dwight Plympton Conklin

  Visual Materials

  Dwight Plympton Conklin (1829-1856) was a California settler and Gold Rush miner. Note with item reads: "Dwight Plympton Conklin, uncle of George Chandler Conklin." Photographer: Robert H. Vance. Imprint inside case: "R. H. Vance, Premium Daguerrean Galleries, San Francisco, Sacramento & Marysville." Date based on years Vance was operating in those three locations.

  (photDAG 17)

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  Mrs. Dwight Plympton Conklin wearing dark bracelets and necklace with cross

  Visual Materials

  Photographer: Robert H. Vance. Imprint inside case: "R. H. Vance, Premium Daguerrean Galleries, San Francisco, Sacramento & Marysville." Date based on years Vance was operating in those three locations. Sitter identified by unknown source at time of transfer.

  (photDAG 18)

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  This certifies that George O. Conklin is the owner of two shares in the Peekskill Academy

  Visual Materials

  An illustrated stock certificate signed by George O. Conklin and three trustees on May 1, 1834. The certificate verifies Conklin paying a sum of ten dollars for two shares in support of the Academy. Trustees signatures read, "William Nelson, Tyler Fountain, and Frederic W. Lyon." Verso includes an additional signature by Conklin. Header of certificate includes a woodcut of the school building by an unidentified printer.

  priPEF 15

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  Dwight Bartlett letters to family

  Manuscripts

  Series of seventeen letters sent by Dwight Bartlett from Nevada and Utah to his family in Connecticut between 1870 and 1873. The letters are addressed to his mother Christine Fisher Bartlett and sister Christina Bartlett Carpenter (later Brainerd). Bartlett's letters provide vivid accounts, many of them disparaging, of his experiences with and observations of life in the West. He writes throughout of his homesickness, illnesses, monetary losses, and the advent of the railroad. He also specifically writes about the Shoshone and Ute Indians in Utah and of the Mormons, who he derides as having "very few men of intelligence and wealth...so they lack the elements that give strength and dignity to a community" (1870, Jan.5); of traveling to San Francisco to organize a company to work the mines in the Cope District (he later wrote that the trip "accomplished nothing"), of the contrast in opportunities for those with a "little style" and poor workingmen, and of his belief that unemployment, especially on the Pacific Railroad, was caused by Chinese laborers (1870, March 5); of the lack of opportunities in the mines near Pine Grove, Nevada, of passing up an opportunity to accompany an expedition to Big Horn because "it is almost certain death for white men to go there unless they go in large numbers and well armed," of his lack of respect for political figures such as U.S. Grant and Ben Butler, of his low opinion of Nevada Indians ("certain...writers have thrown a false and foolish glamour around the character of the Indian"), and of the "frog pond lawyers" in mountain camps (1870, July 27); of the danger of the mines near Virginia City, of which he writes "a larger proportion of men who work in these mines have been killed than of those who were in the war," particularly at the Yellow Jacket Mine (1870, Sep.15); of attending the legislature at Carson, where "it is said votes were sold dog cheap," of the frequent activities of vigilante committees, who stormed a jail and hung a prisoner, and of the jails being so full that "old bums can get drunk with impunity for there is no place to put them" (1871, March 29); of a traveling bull and bear fight and of the haunting of a cabin near Dayton, Nevada, by a spirit named Anne (1871, Aug.2); of fires in Virginia City and Pioche and the subsequent escape of prisoners (1871, Oct.2); and of an earthquake centered near Inyo, California (1872, Apr.13).

  mssHM 26633-26649

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  Ellison Lassell Crawford correspondence

  Manuscripts

  Crawford wrote these letters to his father James B. Crawford. In the letters Ellison Crawford describes his life in California. He includes descriptions of Sacramento, San Francisco as well as the mining camps Willow Creek, Spanish Diggings, and Spanish Bar. Crawford also talks about mining and the difficulties in finding gold, trying to attend church regularly, bad weather, selling supplies to his fellow miners, the Chinese mining near him, vigilance committee activity, murders, and crime in general.

  mssHM 68084-68105

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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.

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