Collection Items

  • Book/Printed Material
    A year of American travel. Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902), the daughter of a Missouri Senator and wife of explorer John Charles Frémont, first came to California in 1849, when she and her young daughter spent six months at her husband's newly-acquired ranch at Mariposas, 140 miles east of San Francisco. The Frémonts also spent the years 1851-1852 and 1857-1861 at the Mariposas ranch before moving to St. Louis during...
    • Contributor: Frémont, Jessie Benton
    • Date: 1878
  • Book/Printed Material
    Gospel pioneering: reminiscences of early Congregationalism in California, 1833-1920, The son of a Maine Congregational leader, William Chauncey Pond (b. 1830) sailed around the Horn to California as a "home missionary" in 1853. Gospel pioneering (1921) presents highlights of his career in the West: creation of San Francisco's Greenwich St. Church; ministry in the Sierra County mining town of Downieville; story of The Pacific, a Congregationalist-Presbyterian journal; founding of the Pacific School of...
    • Contributor: Pond, William C. (William Chauncey)
    • Date: 1921
  • Book/Printed Material
    The narrative of a Japanese; what he has seen and the people he has met in the course of the last forty years. Joseph Heco (1837-1897), a native of the province of Sanyodo, went to sea in 1850. When his ship was dismasted, he and other members of the crew were rescued by an American ship which took Heco to California, and the young Japanese did not return to his native land until 1859. The narrative of a Japanese, vol. 1 (1895) contains Heco's reminiscences, based on...
    • Contributor: Heco, Joseph
    • Date: 1895
  • Book/Printed Material
    Life by land and sea. Born in Sag Harbor, Long Island, Prentice Mulford (1834-1891) sailed to San Francisco on a clipper in 1856 and remained for sixteen years. He left for a long tour of Europe in 1872 and then settled in New York City where he became known as a comic lecturer and author of poems and essays and a columnist for the New York Daily Graphic (a...
    • Contributor: Mulford, Prentice
    • Date: 1889
  • Book/Printed Material
    The round trip from the Hub to the Golden Gate, Susie Champney Clark was a Boston matron who visited California as a member of an organized rail tour forty years after the Gold Rush. The round trip from the Hub to the Golden gate (1890) describes that rail trip, with special attention to stops at Chicago, Pasadena, Santa Barbara, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Sonoma County, the Lick Observatory, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Yosemite,...
    • Contributor: Clark, Susie C. (Susie Champney)
    • Date: 1890

    Resource:
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  • Book/Printed Material
    A start in life; a journey across America; fruit farming in California. English businessman Charles Finch Dowsett (1835 or 1836-1915) travelled across America by rail in 1890 to become an agent for land sales in Merced County, California. A start in life (1891?) is a book-length piece of promotional literature written and published by Dowsett to extol Merced County's virtues, focusing on the prospects for fruit farming in the region. He also describes his cross country...
    • Contributor: Dowsett, C. F. (Charles Finch)
    • Date: 1891

    Resource:
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  • Book/Printed Material
    Early recollections of the mines, and a description of the great Tulare valley. James H. Carson (d. 1853) wrote this volume, supposed to be the first book printed in Stockton, not long before his death. Early recollections of the mines (1852) first appeared as a supplement to the San Joaquín Republican in 1852 and was published shortly afterward as a bound pamphlet. The version published here was reprinted in the Magazine of history, 1931. Carson offers a...
    • Contributor: Carson, James H.
    • Date: 1931
  • Book/Printed Material
    California. A trip across the plains, in the spring of 1850, being a daily record of incidents of the trip ... and containing valuable information to emigrants ... James Abbey was a member of a party that left New Albany, Indiana, for California in the spring of 1850. California. A trip across the plains (1850) is reprinted here from a version published in the Magazine of history, 1933. It is based on the diary kept by Abbey during that journey and letters he sent to friends at home as his party made...
    • Contributor: Abbey, James
    • Date: 1933
  • Book/Printed Material
    California in 1849. Charles F. Hotchkiss (b. ca. 1807) was a New Haven, Connecticut merchant, who sailed to California in December, 1848, bringing a cargo of goods for the miners across Panama at Chagres. California in 1849 (1933) was written out by Hotchkiss at the age of seventy-three and published more than fifty years later in The Magazine of history. He recalls his experiences as a merchant...
    • Contributor: Hotchkiss, Charles F.
    • Date: 1933
  • Book/Printed Material
    California gold; an authentic history of the first find, with the names of those interested in the discovery; James Stephens Brown (b. 1828) was one of James W. Marshall's companions on January 24, 1848, when Marshall discovered gold in the raceway of a mill his workmen were constructing for Johann Sutter at Coloma. Brown later settled in Utah. California gold (1894) is here reprinted from a version published in the Magazine of history in 1933. Brown recounts his association with Sutter and...
    • Contributor: Brown, James Stephens
    • Date: 1933
  • Book/Printed Material
    Sketches of California. An account of the life, manners and customs of the inhabitants. Its history, climate, soil, productions, &c. Frederick A. Gay, proprietor of "Gay's Canchalagua" at 36 Broadway in New York City, had developed a patent medicine based on canchalagua, a California herb. Sketches of California (1848), printed here from a version published in the Magazine of history of 1925, is an early piece of pre-Gold Rush promotional literature for California settlement in which Gay focuses on the region's potential for agriculture...
    • Contributor: Gay, Frederick A.
    • Date: 1925
  • Book/Printed Material
    Life and adventures of Col. L.A. Norton. Lewis Adelbert Norton (b. 1819) grew up in Canada and western New York. Banished from Canada for taking the Patriot side in the Rebellion of 1837-1838, Norton settled in Illinois, where he raised a regiment for the Mexican War. On his return home, he led an overland party to California. Life and adventures of Col. L.A. Norton (1887) describes Norton's early life and his...
    • Contributor: Norton, L. A. (Lewis Adelbert)
    • Date: 1887
  • Book/Printed Material
    The Indians of southern California in 1852; the B.D. Wilson report and a selection of contemporary comment. Benjamin Davis Wilson (1811-1878) of Tennessee came to California in 1841, married into the prominent Yorba family, and acquired a vast property, including a ranch that encompassed the site of modern Riverside. He was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1851 and was named sub-agent for Indian Affairs for Southern California not long after. The Indians of southern California in 1852 (1952) reprints a...
    • Contributor: Lessing J. Rosenwald Reference Collection (Library of Congress) - Wilson, Benjamin Davis - Caughey, John Walton
    • Date: 1952
  • Book/Printed Material
    The condition of affairs in Indian Territory and California. A report Charles Cornelius Coffin Painter was an agent of the Indian Rights Association, headquartered in Philadelphia. The condition of affairs in Indian Territory and California (1888) reports Painter's findings at the Seger Colony and Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Anadarko, Iowa, Comanche, Wichita, and Ponca agencies and reservations in the Indian Territory. In California, he visits Indian settlements and reservations at Cohuilla, Agua Caliente, San Ysabel, Mesa Grande,...
    • Contributor: Indian Rights Association - Painter, C. C. (Charles Cornelius)
    • Date: 1888
  • Book/Printed Material
    Gerstäcker's travels. Rio de Janeiro--Buenos Ayres--Ride through the pampas--Winter journey across the Cordilleras--Chili--Valparaiso--California and the gold fields. Friedrich Gerstäcker (1816-1872), a native of Hamburg, left Germany in 1837 for a six-year stay in New York. On his return to Germany, he published two travel memoirs, and the Frankfurt government subsidized his return to America in 1849 to collect information for prospective emigrants to California. On his return home, he published several books dealing with his travels. Gerstäcker's travels (1854) is the...
    • Contributor: Gerstäcker, Friedrich
    • Date: 1854
  • Book/Printed Material
    California letters of Lucius Fairchild, Lucius Fairchild (1831-1896) left Madison, Wisconsin, for California in 1849 and remained in the West until 1858. On his return to Wisconsin, Fairchild carved out a remarkable career as a soldier-politician: serving in a Wisconsin regiment in the Civil War, winning election as governor in 1866, and then representing the United States abroad in a variety of diplomatic posts. California letters of Lucius Fairchild...
    • Contributor: Fairchild, Lucius - Schafer, Joseph
    • Date: 1931
  • Book/Printed Material
    Life on the plains and among the diggings; being scenes and adventures of an overland journey to California: with particular incidents of the route, mistakes and sufferings of the emigrants, the Indian ... Born in Aurora, New York, Alonzo Delano (1806-1874) moved on to the Midwest as a teenager. July 1848 found him a consumptive Ottawa, Illinois, storekeeper, and he joined a local California Company. He remained in the West after the Gold Rush, winning fame as an early California humorist. Life on the plains and among the diggings (1857) is based largely on letters from Delano...
    • Contributor: Delano, Alonzo
    • Date: 1857
  • Book/Printed Material
    An excursion to California over the prairie, Rocky mountains, and great Sierra Nevada. With a stroll through the diggings and ranches of that country. Englishman William Redmond Kelly (1791-1855) visited California in 1849 and 1850, and his account of that trip was widely read. An excursion to California (1851) is the two-volume account of Kelly's trip to the American West. The first volume takes him from England to California, January-July 1849. After landing in New York City, Kelly records his route through Buffalo, Detroit, Ottawa, Illinois, and St....
    • Contributor: Kelly, William
    • Date: 1851
  • Book/Printed Material
    A California tramp and later footprints; or, Life on the plains and in the Golden state thirty years ago, with miscellaneous sketches in prose and verse ... Illustrated with thirty-nine wood and ... Thaddeus S. Kenderdine made his way from Philadelphia to Michigan in 1858, staying only a month before he determined to head to California. He remained for only a year, returning to New York in 1859. A California tramp (1888) describes Kenderdine's adventures in 1858-1859: his trip west as a driver on a California wagon train, visits to San Francisco and life as tramp and...
    • Contributor: Kenderdine, Thaddeus Stevens
    • Date: 1888
  • Book/Printed Material
    California: a pleasure trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate, April, May, June, 1877 Miriam Squier (1836-1914), an actress turned journalist who eventually became a powerful figure in American publishing, married publisher Frank Leslie in 1874. In 1877, the couple traveled to California, and Mrs. Leslie recorded details of their luxurious transcontinental rail trip. California: a pleasure trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate (1877) chronicles the scenes they passed en route, as well as San Francisco's welcome...
    • Contributor: Leslie, Frank
    • Date: 1972
  • Book/Printed Material
    Pilgrimage of Mary commandery no. 36, Knights templar of Pennsylvania to the Twenty-ninth triennial conclave of the Grand encampment U.S. at San Francisco, Cal. Clifford Paynter Allen (b. 1841) was a member of the Mary Commandery of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Knights Templar, a Masonic Order. Pilgrimage of Mary commandery no. 36 (1904) is his account of the chapter's rail trip to the Knights Templar's 1904 convention in San Francisco, with side trips en route to Yellowstone Park, Tacoma, and Fort Vancouver. After the convention, the group...
    • Contributor: Allen, Clifford P. (Clifford Paynter)
    • Date: 1904
  • Book/Printed Material
    Crusoe's island. John Ross Browne (1817-1875) of Kentucky, the official reporter for the California State Constitutional Convention of 1849, came to California in 1849 as an employee of the government revenue service. He traveled widely in the next two decades, including a stay in China as U.S. minister, before settling down in Oakland in 1870. Crusoe's island (1864) contains four short works: (1) Crusoe's island, an...
    • Contributor: Browne, J. Ross (John Ross)
    • Date: 1864
  • Book/Printed Material
    Recollections and opinions of an old pioneer. Peter Hardeman Burnett (1807-1895) spent his early years in Tennessee and Missouri, serving as a district attorney in the latter state. In 1843 he joined an emigrant party bound for Oregon, where he became a prominent and controversial lawyer, judge, and politician in the new territory. In 1848, he went to California in search of gold and soon became a business and political leader...
    • Contributor: Burnett, Peter H. (Peter Hardeman) - Joseph Meredith Toner Collection (Library of Congress)
    • Date: 1880
  • Book/Printed Material
    Touching incidents in the life and labors of a pioneer on the Pacific coast since 1853. Joseph Wilkinson Hines (b. ca. 1824) left New York State in 1853 as a Methodist missionary to Ohio. He later settled in Santa Clara County, California, where he was a prominent Republican and anti-slavery advocate. Touching incidents in the life and labors of a pioneer (1911) is a collection of unrelated papers by Hines: speeches and poems touching such subjects as missionary experiences in...
    • Contributor: Hines, Joseph Wilkinson
    • Date: 1911
  • Book/Printed Material
    Wonderland; or, Twelve weeks in and out of the United States. Brief account of a trip across the continent--short run into Mexico--ride to the Yosemite Valley--steamer voyage to Alaska, the land of ... Edward S. Parkinson was a New Jersey newspaperman who traveled to California and Alaska in 1892. Wonderland, or Twelve weeks in and out of the United States (1894) is his account of that three-month adventure: a rail trip from New Jersey to California with side trips to Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Highlights include visits to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Yosemite, Portland and Shoshone;...
    • Contributor: Parkinson, Edward S.
    • Date: 1894