Preserving the record of direct democracy in Southern California

You might also be interested in

• Image not available

  Royal Arcanum. Southern California Council No. 728 resolution on death of Jordan Stone

  Manuscripts

  Correspondence of Martha D. Stone and her extended family. Martha D. Stone's correspondence contains letters and documents on family history, including those from 1908 to 1909. Besides the family members, the correspondents include Greenlee D. Letcher, Lawrence Washington (1836-1926) and Frank P. Flint. Also included are four letters, 1916 to 1918, from Jordan M. Stone describing his life in Banning and Pasadena, California, and photographs of Jordan M. and William Welch Stone at Hollister Ranch, California. Jonathan C. Gibson's correspondence includes two letters to his wife written while away from home; the letter of October 18, 1817, contains a vivid description of the flood of emigrants headed to "Mizura;" the letters to his daughter written between 1840 and 1846 discuss family and local news of Culpeper County and details of some cases that he argued. Also included is a letter, 1821, January, from his kinsman and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Fayette Ball (1791-1836), describing bills under consideration. Letters that Frances Ann Gibson Welch Burt and J. Mallory Welch exchanged in the summer of 1844, during her visit to Virginia. In the letter of August 10, 1844, written on pro-Clay pictorial stationery, she described a "Whig festival" in Dandridge, attended by some "thousand persons;" and on August 26, 1844, she gives an account of a Methodist camp meeting in "Prince William Springs." Also included are letters from her friends and relatives. The letter, January 1, 1847, of her friend Mary V. Moore describes her stay at the Olympian Springs, Kentucky, her wedding to a young man she met there, and the busy social life of a newlywed in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. There are also the journal and letters of Mary Emma (Mamie) Cathell Grace (1861-1937), a native of Philadelphia who attended New Orleans High School. The first portion of the diary covers the school year of 1878, the entries describe school studies, including lessons taught by Susan Blanchard Elder (1835-1923) and Mary Humphrey Stamps (1835-); the Mardi Gras festivities, particularly the parade staged by the Knights of Momus, the outbreak of yellow fever, etc. The second portion of the diary gives an account of her trip to Philadelphia to meet her father and siblings. In 1885, Mamie married Dr. Jesse Edward Grace (1852-1895) and moved to Weimar, Texas. The collection also includes photographs, newspaper clippings from The Asheville Citizen, and ephemera.

  mssHM 74674

• Image not available

  "Expropriation of Land in Lower California." File 089-4, Part 1. From (~1.5"). Includes some U.S. govt. docs, such as an item on the American Mexican Claims Commission, dated 1943 ("Established pursuant to the Settlement of Mexican Claims Act of 1942.") Talk about an irresistable force meeting an immovable object: the SP, king of the land-grabbing railroads, versus the Carranza/Cardenas/Camacho land-redistributing agrarian machine! In this body of material, the SPM is trying to reclaim lands they considered theirs by some earlier precedents and agreements, most of which predate the 1917 Constitution. But it's clear from this that even the U.S. govt., in the form of the Agrarian Claims Commission, doesn't think the SP has any claim to certain contested lands in Mexico. On Oct. 8, 1940, ACC Executive Officer George H. Winters politely but firmly responds in a three-page letter to SP VP W.A. Worthington that "It is not clear how the agreements of Dec. 28, 1915 and June 22, 1916 [which he details at the start of letter] can, of themselves, properly be regarded as establishing any interest on the part of the Southern Pacific Company in the lands in question." He goes on to note that "From the language of the first of those arguments it seems to be obvious that the creation of any interest in the lands here involved on the part of the claimant depended upon the performance of a number of conditions subsequent. The record contains no direct evidence as to the performance of those conditions...," etc. This letter is quite revealing of U.S. policy with regard to American land claims. The FDR government's Good Neighborhood-ism colors a lot of this, in fascinating ways. This also involves the SP-sheltered venture known as the "Compa-ia de Terrenos Y Aguas de La Baja California," which is noted elsewhere in this survey (specifically, see II:4, XIII:1, XIII:4). Also contains large envelope with maps, other materials; didn't look inside envelope

  Manuscripts

  These materials, consisting primarily of correspondence but also including maps, news clippings, photographs, and blueprints, are arranged and bound by topic according to the Southern Pacific's internal organizational schema. There are 160 individual bound items in these 23 boxes. Each grouping is in reverse chronological order as it was originally filed by SP de México administrators. Collection has material in English and Spanish.

  mssSPdeMéxicocollection