2025 Library Collectors’ Council Acquisitions

The Huntington has acquired a trove of six exceptional collections through the support of the Library Collectors’ Council, a group that helps fund significant additions to the institution’s holdings. Now in its 28th year, the council has helped raise more than $7 million since its founding in 1997 to support the acquisition of rare books, manuscripts, photographs, and other special collections.

“Each year, our curators take us to places we thought we knew but didn’t,” said Sandra Brooke Gordon, Avery Director of the Library. “The items they present to the council for consideration show us the past in ways ranging from public to intimate—providing glimpses that illuminate history, literature, science, and life.”

Spanning continents and centuries, the newly acquired materials are:

• Previously unknown letters from a 17th-century Caribbean slave trader
• Rare 1764 eyewitness account from Pontiac’s War
• Records of Chinese indentured laborers in 19th-century Cuba
• First edition of the first color-printed medical text, De Lactibus (1627)
• Unique 18th-century work on mint taxonomy with 26 original watercolors
• A series of intimate letters and inscribed books by John Steinbeck

Previously Unknown Letters from a 17th-Century Caribbean Slave Trader 

Around 1673, William Freeman (1645–1707) relocated from St. Christopher in the Leeward Islands to London to expand his family’s business in plantations and the slave trade. Acting as an agent for the Deputy Governor of Montserrat and a middleman for the Royal African Company, Freeman used his Caribbean roots to gain leverage with British bankers and officials.

From 1678 to 1685, Freeman and his clerks copied his correspondence into a fully published notebook, now held at the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston. In 2024, a second volume of Freeman’s correspondence surfaced. Previously unknown to the scholarly community, this new volume—now at The Huntington—picks up just four days after the published one ended.

“These recently discovered letters shed light on a crucial gap in our understanding of early Atlantic slavery and empire building,” said Vanessa Wilkie, William A. Moffett Senior Curator of Medieval Manuscripts and British History. “This letter book gives scholars material to support more nuanced conceptions of systems of slavery, capitalism, and colonialism, and to better understand the lived experiences of those who were trapped within and resisted those systems.”

The letters enhance existing Huntington collection strengths, as they are filled with detailed plans and instructions that offer scholars new insights into the growing operations of European empires and trading companies in the early years of the African Diaspora.

Rare 1764 Eyewitness Account from Pontiac’s War

A newly uncovered orderly book from the 1764 expedition of British officer Henry Bouquet offers the only known account by a Pennsylvania militia unit during Pontiac’s War (1763–1765), a conflict that historian Colin G. Calloway has called America’s First War of Independence. 

The orderly book, essentially a diary of an entire fighting unit, is especially valuable for historians of the era, when few enlisted men had the ability or spare time to keep personal journals or write letters. Penned by Sgt. James McMahan (1734–1823), a first-generation Scots Irish immigrant who settled on lands taken from the Delawares in the wake of the swindle known as the Walking Purchase, the manuscript offers unique insight into military life on the eve of the American Revolutionary War. 

“Records from this conflict are exceedingly rare,” said Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American History. “What we know about the war comes primarily from the papers of the British staff commanders; what is missing are the records of field officers. Without those, we are left with a vision of the war as a board game, where brigades, regiments, and companies are moved like so many chess pieces.”

The conflict began in the spring of 1763, when a coalition of Native nations led by Obwandiyag—the chief of Odawa (Ottawa) nation, better known under his Gallicized name, Pontiac—sought to recover their lands through a series of attacks against the British army and the settlers it was protecting.

This invaluable manuscript joins The Huntington’s renowned collections of the Seven Years’ War era as well as its exceptional holdings of 18th-century orderly books. 

Records of Chinese Indentured Laborers in 19th-Century Cuba

On Feb. 20, 1869, Lam Man, 20, and Chi Chan, 22, arrived at a Havana sugar mill under eight-year labor contracts. Known later as Adolfo and Casio, they were among 125,000 Chinese indentured workers brought to Cuba after the transatlantic slave trade declined.

Following grueling years of macheting sugarcane, weeding and manuring the fields, clearing new land, digging ditches, or—if truly unfortunate—working in the boiling house, indentured Chinese laborers had few options. They could either commit to another term or try their luck in the cities’ shops and restaurants.

This collection helps reconstruct the stories of Adolfo, Casio, and hundreds of others like them in Cuba from the 1860s to the 1890s. Consisting of manuscripts and printed forms, these papers include certificates of nationality for servants generated by the Chinese consulate in Havana; identification documents; contracts outlining the terms, including years of servitude, labor type, as well as food and clothing provisions; death and burial certificates; manuscripts regarding missing, runaway, and lawbreaking servants; and an assortment of striking single documents, including a slave depository log sheet containing the names and descriptions of recaptured escapees.

“These documents show us the human cost of sugar production in the 19th century,” said Diego A. Godoy, associate curator of California and Hispanic Collections. “They reveal a chapter of Asian diaspora history that is often overlooked and adds crucial depth to our understanding of labor, migration, and survival in the Americas.”

The materials complement Huntington holdings on transpacific trade, Spanish colonialism, and East Asian migration. 

First Edition of the First Color-Printed Medical Text, De Lactibus (1627) 

Gaspare Aselli’s De Lactibus is a landmark in the history of medicine and printing, combining groundbreaking anatomical discoveries with the first-ever scientifically accurate color-printed medical illustrations. Aselli’s research on the lacteal vessels—newly discovered structures in the small intestine that transported a milky fluid derived from digested food to the liver—marked a significant advancement in anatomical and physiological knowledge.

“This book was revolutionary,” said Joel Klein, Molina Curator for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. “Aselli’s De Lactibus didn’t just change how doctors understood the body—it changed how they saw it. The precision of the color woodcuts communicated a depth of anatomical understanding that text alone could never convey.”

Printed in Milan, the first edition features four vivid color-printed chiaroscuro woodcuts using several distinct inks—an early innovation in color printing. This copy’s provenance links it to physicians in 17th-century Mantua, enhancing its historical value.

The medical importance of De Lactibus lies in its groundbreaking contribution to the study of the lymphatic system and its extensive influence on anatomical research. Aselli was a professor and physician at the University of Pavia and built on a broader anatomical tradition established by Andreas Vesalius and others at Italian universities. Unlike later editions, this first printing preserves the original color plates in their full brilliance, while subsequent versions lost their color or reduced the fidelity of the images.

Aselli’s work enriches The Huntington’s strong holdings in medical science, including the recently acquired W. Bruce Fye Collection—a landmark assemblage of works on cardiovascular medicine, surgery, science, and technology—and the Los Angeles County Medical Association collections. 

Unique 18th-Century Work on Mint Taxonomy with 26 Original Watercolors 

William Sole (1739–1802), a British apothecary and botanist, was best known for his research on mints, which he grew in his garden from specimens collected throughout the United Kingdom. In 1798, he published his findings in Menthae Britannicae, accompanied by 24 full-plate etchings, all executed by William Hibbert from artwork by several artists.

The volume acquired by The Huntington includes a unique set of Sole’s outstanding work in which the 24 etched plates were replaced with 26 original, intricate watercolors bearing manuscript annotations. This copy is very likely Sole’s own, preserving the original artwork that was used to prepare the etched plates.

Sole’s printed preface expressly states that the book was to be issued with the plates uncolored. The richly detailed watercolors in the acquired volume almost certainly predate the engraved plates and were probably the source from which the engraver worked. The annotations appear to be by either Sole himself or by J.E. Smith, a botanist with whom Sole was consulting as he completed the text for the book. The combination of original watercolors and annotations is invaluable, both in its unique nature and in showing the process by which botanists reviewed and shared information.

“This copy doesn’t just illustrate mint—it’s the genesis of British mint taxonomy,” said Daniel Lewis, Dibner Senior Curator for the History of Science and Technology. “It shows us how knowledge was grown, quite literally, in a garden, then transferred to the page with exquisite care and observation.” 

A Series of Intimate Letters and Inscribed Books by John Steinbeck

This group of letters and inscribed books attests to the close friendship between John and Elaine Steinbeck and John Fearnley, who was a casting director for Rodgers and Hammerstein in New York. Fearnley knew Steinbeck’s third wife, Elaine, from her career working in musical theater. 

Rodgers and Hammerstein had adapted Steinbeck’s novel Sweet Thursday (1954) for the stage in 1955. The novel is a continuation of his more famous novella Cannery Row and was written anticipating its immediate adaptation.

The resulting musical, Pipe Dream, was not a success. Steinbeck had let Fearnley know he was unhappy with the production. “When Dick [Rodgers] announced that it was going to be called ‘Pipe Dream,’ my heart fell but I didn’t know why. Now I think I do know. The name indicated that R+H didn’t believe in it.” Over several long letters, Steinbeck offers suggestions for a new production and muses on the nature of art. Many of Steinbeck’s novels and novellas were adapted for stage and screen during his lifetime, and much Steinbeck scholarship has focused on these adaptations. His candid writing to a theater insider and trusted friend offers rich evidence of his views on the process.

Most of the letters were written in 1959, primarily from a sojourn in England, where the Steinbecks moved so that John could work on his final book, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, a retelling of Thomas Malory’s late medieval compilation of Arthurian legends. The letters detail Steinbeck’s delight working on this project in the region where the events allegedly took place and in proximity to Winchester, where an important manuscript of Malory’s work had recently been discovered. “These days in England are important out of all proportions,” he writes to Fearnley in spring 1959. “I don’t recall ever having been so content and unbewildered. Words for my work appear like little magic footprints as though an invisibility has passed by and I am pleased with them.”

It may seem surprising that a native Californian well known for his social realist novels set in the Golden State would enjoy living in England to work on medieval legends. Understanding why he wrote to Fearnley (“I feel so at home here—more than I remember anyplace”) helps us to understand his fiction—especially his ongoing interest in place, community, and belonging—from a new vantage point. 

“The letters in this collection give a glimpse of a titan of American letters before, and just after, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature,” said Karla Nielsen, senior curator of literary collections. “They reveal a writer still deeply committed to imaginative storytelling but worn out from decades of assiduous work, finding respite in an English countryside so different from the industrialized agricultural communities of his earlier life in California.”

Kevin Durkin is the interim director of news and media relations at The Huntington.