Manuscripts
This collection relates to Southern California rancher and horse-breeder Leonard J. Rose (1827-1899) and his family and chiefly consists of drafts of the historical writings of Rose's son Leonard John Rose, Jr. (1862-). In addition there is some family correspondence, printed material and ephemera, and manuscripts on California pioneers and emigrant narratives. Leonard John Rose, Jr. was an amateur historian and this collection contains drafts of his memoirs and descriptions of 18th and 19th century California social life and customs. In "A Serial in Three Parts," L. J. Rose Jr. thoroughly describes the livestock management practices and horsemanship of Mexican cowboys in 18th and 19th century California. In Gringos grandees, he further illustrates the social life and customs of Mexicans and Native Americans living in a small village in the San Gabriel Valley. In this manuscript, L. J. Rose, Jr., narrates his and his father's life stories, with accounts of his family's move west, success in wine production and horse breeding, but it is also a local view of Los Angeles and California history in the second half of the 19th century.
The writing in this collection of Leonard John Rose is limited to his accounts of leading a failed California bound emigrant train from the Midwest. The third section contains short biographies of L. J. Rose and Calvin F. Fargo, narratives of the Rose Party, and the diary of Martha True Fargo, L.J. Rose, Jr.'s mother-in-law. The diary provides a social history of women in Portage, Wisconsin in 1864. The ephemera section of this collection revolves around newspaper and magazine clippings about the Rose family, their homes and estates, their prize winning horses, and their wine production. Some of the newspaper articles are from the Los Angeles Times and the Illustrated Los Angeles Herald, while the magazine articles include a 1950 three part series entitled, "Pastime of Millions" by Carleton F. Burke in The Thoroughbred of California. Additions to the collection, received from Mr. and Mrs. John Gallagher, includes correspondence: one letter by L. J. Rose, Sr. to his wife Amanda (1853); a letter by John V. Wachtel to Nina Rose before they were married (1879); and several letters between Wachtel, the firm Britton & Gray and California Senator Frank P. Flint regarding Bill S. 1038, an "act to provide for the adjudication and payment of claims arising from Indian depredations" (1909). There are also several pages from a scrapbook and four artifacts belonging to the Rose family. The scrapbook contains clippings regarding Los Angeles, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the death of L. J. Rose, ephemeral items belonging John V. Wachtel and his life in Baltimore, ephemeral item belonging to Nina Rose Wachtel, and two handwritten letters (one by Harry Rose and one by L. J. Rose, Jr. to their sister Nina). There is also a bill of freight from 1813-1814. This correspondence is arranged chronologically. This collection contains references to several notable individuals such as: Guy Rose, Jean Louis Vignes, Leland Stanford, Tiburcio Vasquez, Robert Bonner, William Henry Vanderbilt, Edward Fitzgerald Beale, Stephen Watts Kearny, and Henry Tifft Gage. Items in this collection touch upon several aspects of California history from the 18th and 19th centuries such as: agriculture, gold discoveries, Californios, capitalists, Chinese Americans, droughts, harness horse breeding and racing, Kearny's Expedition, land grants, livestock, the San Gabriel Mission, Mohave Indians, Anglo-American pioneers, railroads, ranches and ranch life. This collection also contains items on 19th century New York auctions and culture, horse breeding and racing in the United States, overland journeys to California, and women in 19th century Wisconsin.
