Robert Lewis Harris letters to Lucy W. Kimball | Collections | The Huntington

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Manuscripts

Robert Lewis Harris letters to Lucy W. Kimball

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Description: Series of letters written by Robert L. Harris to his fiancée Lucy W. Kimball in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The letters begin with Harris' stay in Boston in early 1861 while awaiting instructions to travel to California as a railroad engineer. While in Boston Harris writes of his attendance of meetings held by the Franklin Club and the Freemasons, of an Easter service and festival, and of early Civil War fervor, particularly around the Lynn Armory (he writes that "I never before witnessed such perfect wildness of enthusiasm as was manifested in the streets today"). In late April Harris sailed for California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and he writes extensively of both life aboard the ship and of the scenery in Dominican Republic, Panama, and Mexico, particularly Acapulco. He also writes of stopping "mid-ocean" to exchange letters and parcels with the Northern Light (and also to "put them on their guard against Jeff Davis' pirates"). Harris arrived in San Francisco in mid-May 1861 and was "stupefied, overwhelmed, [and] confounded by my first vision of the Golden State." Once in California Harris writes of his plans for a horse-drawn railway, of climbing the Sierra Nevada mountains in a snowstorm, of the possibility of a railroad near Washoe City, Nevada, and of his visits to the Ophir Silver Mining Company and encounters with Captain George Blunt Wendell, San Francisco and San Jose Railroad president Timothy Dame, and Jerome Lincoln (brother of Harris' mentor Ezra Lincoln). He also writes of his dismay at the news of the Battle of Fredericksburg and of his religious views (he notes visiting Roman Catholic cathedrals, Jewish synagogues, and "African camp meetings," but that "I have not so strong sectarian feelings as most people.") Also included are three sketches of pastoral life in California.

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