Manuscripts

Cephas Arms letters

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Description: This collection is comprised of letters that chronicle Cehpas Arms' wagon journey from Knoxville, Illinois to Stockton, California from 1849-1850. There are 22 letters addressed to his second wife Louisa A. Taylor, 1 letter from Taylor, and 1 letter to his mother Experience Gates Arms. The letters are detailed in terms of dates, locations, routes, events, acquaintances, and his spiritual reflections. Although he often remarks on the beauty of the natural landscape and flora, the harsh realities of the journey are reminded with each grave marker mentioned. Arms describes the difficulties faced by him and his team including encounters with Native Americans, illnesses, disastrous stampedes, loss of cattle, and the challenging terrain. While staying in Utah, Arms encounters Brigham Young and details his impression of the Mormons. Of the 24 letters, 18 include typewritten transcripts prepared by Louisa Barber Hoblit and Carrolle Barber Clark.
Type: Manuscripts(Opens in new tab)
Production date: 1849-1850.
Call number: mssHM 83913-83936
Creator

Warrant to William Ongley to bear the arms of Hopson

Manuscripts

Document signed. Vellum roll. Arms emblazoned. Two seals in metal cases. Signed by Principle King of Arms, Sir George Nayler, and Clarenceux King of Arms, Ralph Bigland.

mssHM 2902

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First Calais roll of arms

Manuscripts

The present manuscript belongs to the first of two variant versions of the Calais Roll in circulation during the later sixteenth century. It includes details of the military retinues of each peer and knight as well as a summary of the 700 ships and more than 14,000 mariners of the English fleet, arranged by home port, and a few notes of other expeditionary expenses. The manuscript is skillfully and calligraphically designed and executed, with a colored frontispiece of the arms of Edward III, encircled by the Garter, and contains 116 heraldic coats of arms, professionally tricked. The decorative scheme of the manuscript is however unfinished, with only one of the arms colored in, although the scribe's instructions to the illuminator can be seen.

mssHM 72023

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Samuel Nichols papers

Manuscripts

The collection contains letters from Samuel Nichols to family discussing his 1849 overland journey and 1850 ocean voyage to San Francisco via Panama. There are also four letters from his wife, Sarah Ann Taylor Nichols. Among other family papers, there is a diary, from 1821 to 1822, and autobiography, 1821, by Benjamin Hodge, a relative of the Nichols family.

mssHM 48250-48298

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Samuel Nichols papers

Manuscripts

mssHM 48250-48298

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[Palmer Family genealogical roll of arms

Manuscripts

Modeled on genealogical rolls of the late medieval kings of England, this roll of arms, signed by Robert Cooke, Clarenceaux King of Arms, claims to display the ancestry of the Palmer family from the eleventh- or twelfth-century progenitor Henry Palmer to the four sons of Edward Palmer (ca. 1550-1624), a wealthy landowner in England and the New World. A crusader and a member of Henry VIII's Troop of Gentlemen number among the sixty-nine men and women identified here. The earlier portions of the genealogy, clearly calculated to show off illustrious ancestors and to highlight important connections through marriage, are difficult to verify. This roll does not provide the dates of birth or death for anyone in the Palmer pedigree, and only a few are linked definitively to a particular monarch's reign or to a specific historic event.

mssHM 83385

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Brantz Mayer letters to Cornelia Poor Mayer

Manuscripts

Three letters sent by Brantz Mayer in California to his wife Cornelia Poor Mayer in 1872. In the first letter, dated June 17 and sent from San Francisco, Mayer writes of speaking to various individuals about his plans to travel to Yosemite, of other groups who have traveled there, and notes that "about 999 Japs came out of the Hotel [the Grand Hotel, San Francisco] today, from the just arrived China Steamer." In the second letter, dated June 23 from Calaveras County, California, he writes of traveling from San Francisco to Murphys, California, with the Sawyer family and others. In the final letter, dated June 28 in Yosemite Valley, Mayer writes extensively of his travels from Calaveras to Yosemite, of his encounters with locals and tourists, of the scenery, of transportation in the Valley, of expenses, and his conclusions that "as to this Yosemite Journey, I have to observe that it is so fatiguing when quickly & cheaply made, that I might almost say a poor man has no right to undertake it." The letter was completed in San Francisco on July 2, and mentions William W. Belknap and Reverdy Johnson, Mayer's general travels in California, and of Mayer's being "quite fatigued yet, and very generally demoralized by the journey."

mssHM 21311-21313

Cephas Arms letters

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Warrant to William Ongley to bear the arms of Hopson

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[Palmer Family genealogical roll of arms

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