Visual Materials

Photograph of Seid Back Jr. family in front of their home, Portland, Oregon

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Description: Photograph of Seid Gain Back Jr., his wife Mary Chan Back, and their two children Dip Gay Seid Back (1915-1983) and Katherine Mae Seid Back Lee (1918-2006) standing in front of their home in Portland, Oregon. The children are seated in their small, florally decorated pedal fire truck for Portland's 15th Annual Rose Festival, Grand Floral Parade. A caption imbedded in the photograph cites the event, the children's names and ages, and says "Prize Winner." The photograph was taken by well-known Portland area photographer Arthur Prentiss.
Type: Visual Materials(Opens in new tab)
Production date: 1922, June 23.
Call number: photPF 26007
Creator: Prentiss, A. M(Opens in new tab)

Photograph of Seid Back in front of his general store in Portland, Oregon

Visual Materials

A mounted photograph of Chinese American merchant Seid Back and three other men standing in front of Back's store at 146 Second Street in Portland, Oregon. A sign above the store reads "Seid Back & Co. / General Commission Merchants." The other men are unidentified; two are wearing traditional Chinese clothing. The photographer is also unidentified.

photPF 26009

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Back family photograph album

Visual Materials

A photograph album documenting the lives of Seid Back, Jr., Mary Chan Back, and their two children, Dip Gay Seid Back (1915-1983) and Katherine Mae Seid Back Lee (1918-2006). Seid Back, Jr. was the son of prominent Chinese American merchant Seid Back, based in Portland, Oregon. The album begins with a studio portrait of the Back family taken in the early 20th century and continues with the lives of the Back family and friends in locations such as Oregon, Washington, California, and the South Pacific, through the late 1940s. A man who is possibly Dip Gay Seid Back is seen in military clothing at a U.S. encampment; writing on the back says "Men of 13th Gen. Hospital. Dec. 1944. New Guinea." Other photographs show young people, white and Asian, in recreational activities and sometimes posing by new cars or in front of houses. The album depicts the everyday activities of young Chinese Americans during the Chinese Exclusion era, their travels by automobiles throughout the American West, a young Chinese American serviceman in the South Pacific, and interracial marriages between Chinese American women and U.S. servicemen.

photCL 706

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Letters to Seid Back Jr

Manuscripts

Three letters from students thanking Chinese-American businessman Seid Back Jr. for hosting them on a summer boat trip from San Francisco, as well as a letter to Back from police Detective Sergeant H.H. Hawley in Portland, Oregon. The three student letters to Back, all dated 1916, include one from K. Young, who notes "I haven't seen any of our Chinese friends and merchants to [sic] treated our boys as you"; one from K.H. Chiu of the Chinese Students' Christian Association who notes that many of the students Back hosted have already gone back to work or summer school, and asks him to keep a university pennant as a memento of "your Christian brother Chiu and 'California'"; and one from Stephen Mark, who writes from onboard the S.S. "T.C. Walker" that the summer class session has emptied his savings and "I am dead broke, knowing hardly [if] I am to return to college...as each year comes I find it much more difficult to work and study at the same time," and notes that several Chinese students are leaving Berkeley but will probably be replaced with others, although "the requirements are so strict here that many a one finds it necessary to transfer to some other university in order to graduate in due time." The letter from Sergeant Hawley is dated 1913 and asks Back for a contribution toward a dinner for the "poor unfortunate girls" in the Home of the Good Sheppard.

mssHM 80446-80449

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Album of photographs of Portland, Oregon, and environs

Visual Materials

A photograph album with 32 photographs of Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding area. Photographs include waterfalls, winter scenes in the countryside, and grazing cows, as well as a portrait of "Princess Wal-lu-lah" which was reproduced in photographer Lee Moorhouse's "Souvenir Album of Noted Indian Photographs" (1905) as "Princess We-a-lole, Cayuse Maiden"; sweeping view of Portland and Mt. Hood; the capsized French 4-masted bark "Asie" at Davidge's Whart in Portland (this ship capsized in December of 1901); the "Needles" (aka "Pillars of Hercules") rock formations that flank the railroad tracks along the Hood River; H. A. MacNeil's bronze statue "Coming of the White Man" in Washington Park in Portland and views of Multnomah Falls in Oregon; and two buildings under construction from the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905 (the Agricultural Building and the Oriental Building).

photCL 153

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Clark Kinsey photograph of Japanese lumber camp workers and their families in Washington

Visual Materials

A group portrait of lumber camp workers of Japanese heritage, and their families, in front of a camp building with railroad tracks at the doorstep. The gelatin silver photograph, 11 x 14 inches, depicts 31 men, three women, several young children and babies, and a dog. A few men are holding babies and one man is posed holding a watering can above a flowering planter box. Handwriting at the bottom of the print reads: "This is All Japanese Boys at Camp" and the photographer's credit is in the negative: # 65 Kinsey Photo. These loggers worked for the Manley-Moore Lumber Company, which operated approximately 1910 to 1934 on a tract of old growth timber in Pierce County, Washington. (Source: Clark Kinsey Photograph Collection, University of Washington Libraries Digital Collections.)

photPF 26026

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Photograph of Banning, Shorb and Wilson families in front of Banning Home in Wilmington (Calif.)

Manuscripts

1 item. With list of individuals in the photograph.

mssPattoncollection

Photograph of Seid Back Jr. family in front of their home, Portland, Oregon

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Photograph of Seid Back in front of his general store in Portland, Oregon

Back family photograph album

Letters to Seid Back Jr

Album of photographs of Portland, Oregon, and environs

Clark Kinsey photograph of Japanese lumber camp workers and their families in Washington

Photograph of Banning, Shorb and Wilson families in front of Banning Home in Wilmington (Calif.)