Thomas Family Photograph Album

A personal photograph album of 104 images with handwritten captions chiefly depicting Chester A. Thomas (1874-1920) and Thomas family members between 1892 and 1898 in mining camps in Nevada (pages 1-29); at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California (pages 30-33); visiting Harvard University and Cambridge, Massachusetts (pages 38-49); and at Camp Merritt at the Presidio, San Francisco, in 1898 (pages 33-37 and 50-65). The album includes 20 cyanotype photographs (12.5 x 16.5 cm) of the mining camps in Virginia City and Sutro, Nevada (where Thomas's father, Charles Thomas, was superintendent of the Sutro tunnel), including: mining equipment, miners, locomotive cars, interior views of the mine shaft, buildings and mules. Some of the images are of Camp Merritt, at the Presidio in San Francisco, California, where California volunteers assembled in May-June 1898 for transport to the Philippines during the Spanish American War. Thomas, a member of Company K of the United States Cavalry Volunteers, is depicted as well as other soldiers, including members of the 51st Iowa Volunteers.