Manuscripts
Seventy years in California : typewritten manuscript
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California Yankee : William R. Staats, business pioneer : manuscript
Manuscripts
Manuscript copy of Carol Green Wilson's biography California Yankee : William R. Staats, business pioneer (1947), which tells the story of William R. Staats (1867-1928) and his life in Southern California. Includes little personal information on Staats and instead focuses on his business dealings, including those with Henry E. Huntington, and his involvement in the development of Union Oil, Southern California Edison, Throop University (Cal Tech), the Mount Wilson Observatory, the Valley Hunt Club, and the Santa Catalina Island Yacht Club. It is also a detailed history of the economic development of Southern California, and Pasadena in particular, from the 1880s to the 1910s. Typewritten 1944 manuscript with handwritten editing notes. Originally titled, "So Many Worlds : A Business Explorer in the Promised Land."
mssHM 72900
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Correspondence, Documents and Manuscripts, 1781-1807
Manuscripts
The majority of the material in the collection concerns the financial interests of Benjamin Adams and Thomas Adams in Jamaica. Benjamin Adams was owed a significant sum by Jamaican landowner George Noble. Upon Noble's death (ca. 1790), Adams entered into proceedings via attorneys James Corne Pownall and David Duncomb to recover this debt. The process was severely complicated by the revelation that the cane plantation overseen by Noble, known as the Lottery Estate in Trelawney, Jamaica, was not actually owned by him. After Benjamin Adams' death in 1792, the affair was taken up by the executor of his will, his brother Thomas Adams. The collection consists of autograph letters and copies, statements of bills and accounts, estate dealings and promissory notes; included is correspondence with, among others, William Cruden, William Morton Pitt and David Ross.
mssHM 83630-83688
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J. Goldsborough Bruff manuscript history of Sonora and Alta California
Manuscripts
An apparently unpublished history of the states of California and Sonora, found among the papers of J. Goldsborough Bruff, the noted artist of the Gold Rush, though it may or may not be in his hand. A densely-written and substantial contemporary history of California during a transitional time for the region, containing accounts of gold in Sonora, the types of stories that helped spark the great California Gold Rush just a few years later. The manuscript begins with the "discovery of the Gulf of Cal" and contains much about the early discovery and exploration of California and Sonora. There is also a detailed account of gold mining in Sonora. The manuscript concludes with the Mexican-American War.
mssHM 82520