J. Perry Worden collection

A collection of approximately 500 items from 1821 to 1936, which contains original manuscripts and secondary source material collected by J. Perry Worden. The original material assembled by Worden includes manuscripts, eighty-three pieces of correspondence and legal documents, and is composed of three unrelated groups: the Chilton-Rice-Bowdon letters, the Chaffin-Conant letters, and the papers of Henry E. Shelley and Jacob Tripp Chandler. The Chilton-Rice-Bowdon letters constitute the largest part of the collection; the letters center around the family of Thomas Chilton (1798-1854), a U.S. representative from Kentucky from 1827 to 1833. Chilton had thirteen children, including Frances Jane and Sara Elizabeth. Frances Jane Chilton married into the Rice family of South Carolina and Sara Elizabeth Chilton married Franklin Welch Bowdon (1817-1857), a Congressman from Alabama. These letters mostly focus on the Chilton-Rice-Bowdon families as well as on issues of national politics. The second group of original manuscripts, the Chaffin Conant letters, consist of eighteen letters pertaining to the Civil War. The majority were written by Robert C. Chaffin of the 32nd Massachusetts Infantry. Other authors in this group include brothers Nahum Conant and Marcus Conant, cousins of Robert C. Chaffin. The third group of original manuscripts contain a miscellaneous collection of letters and legal documents belonging to Henry E. Shelley and Jacob Tripp Chandler and originated in Texas. The collection's secondary source material contains information on California history and California pioneers; it contains typewritten notes, printed material, and a group of unidentified photographs. The secondary material may have been gathered by Worden for newspaper articles or for background material in his collaboration with Harris Newmark on Sixty years in Southern California.