Americana; recent acquisitions--antiquarian & ephemeral

The library consistently acquires antiquarian, ephemeral and out of print publications in all areas of U.S. history. The following list is a sampling of recently added titles:

Nevada County, the famous Bartlett pear belt of California. Its horticultural resources, healthfulness of climate, temperature, rainfall, topography, facility for irrigation, large and profitable yield of fruits, and other useful information for home-seekers ... Ed. and comp. by E.M. Preston. Pub. by the Nevada County Land and Improvement Association. Nevada City, Brown & Calkins, Printers, 1886.

Report to the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works Company, on its sources of supply; proposed line of works; estimated cost and income. By A.W. Von Schmidt ... October 1, 1871. San Francisco, Alta California Printing House, 1871.

Morehouse, Alonzo Church, b. 1820. Autobiography of A.C. Morehouse, an itinerant minister of the New York and New York east conferences of the Methodist Episcopal church. With an introduction by Bishop Newman. New York, Tibbals Book Co., 1895.

New Orleans Railways Company. Tourists' guide to New Orleans : what to see & how to see it / published and distributed gratis by the New Orleans Railways Company. New Orleans: The Company, [1904].

Sorgho sucré, or, Chinese sugar cane : method of cultivation and manufacture, and its value as a forage plant : including practical experiments, both in cultivation and manufacture, made in various parts of the United States / collected and condensed from authentic sources by a Massachusetts farmer. Boston : D.T. Curtis and E.W. Cobb : For sale by A. Williams & Co., 1857.

Stand up for America : the life of George C. Wallace.[Montgomery, Ala.:Wallace Campaign, 1968]

Stories and comments about George C. Wallace, next President of the United States.[Montgomery, Ala. : Wallace Campaign, 1968?]

Official annual, Sacramento District, Ninth Corps Area, Civilian Conservation Corps.Baton Rouge, La. 1938.

Eley, P. H. (Peter Harden), b. 1876. An epoch in history. Roanoke, Va.: Hammond's Print. Works, 1904. [An account of experiences in the Philippines by one of the teachers sent out by the United States government.]

Furnas, Robert W. (Robert Wilkinson), 1824-1905. Forestry on the plains : an address prepared and delivered by Robert W. Furnas, Brownville, Nebraska, at the fourth annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 23, 1883. [S.l. : s.n., 1883?]

Kleinholz, George. The battle of Washington, a national disgrace. New York City, The B.E.F. Press, c1932. Note: Includes a history of the "Bonus Expeditionary Force", extracts from the press and a compilation of "facts concerning Mr. Hoover". cf. p. 4-5.

Manker, W. J. The ventilator : the ventilation of the radical House of Representatives, showing the most infamous system of swindling that can be found in this or any other country. Indianapolis : Sentinel Printing and Binding Establishment, 1868.

Official handbook of the Girls' Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League of the City of New York. New York, N.Y. : American Sports Pub. Co., 1913/14.

Release of President Lyndon B. Johnson's telephone conversations from May 1968 to January 1969

The LBJ Library released the final segment of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone tapes yesterday (December 4). The library has been working on the telephone conversation tapes since 1993. Read details of the release and listen to MP3 files of selected conversations at the LBJ Library's site.

Online exhibit: Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, 1909

The Seattle Municipal Archives has recently posted an interesting online exhibit highlighting the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exhibition, which was held in Seattle from June-October, 1909. The exhibit contains a number of images and documents digitized from the holdings of the Seattle Municip

"The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, held in Seattle from June 1 to October 16, followed on the heels of the 1906 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon. Initial inspiration for the fair came from a group of Alaska's gold rush pioneers in 1905. In 1906, Seattle businessmen altered the original plan, postponed the 1907 date (so as not to conflict with the Jamestown, Virginia tricentennial celebration) until 1909, and sought financial support for an enlarged scope. The AYPE followed a tradition established in 1876 when Philadelphia held a Centennial Exposition. It was an opportunity for Seattleites to display pride in their heritage and their patriotism."

Two recent donations; 19th Century Americana

Thanks to the kind generosity of two donors, the libraries have recently acquired two wonderful pieces of 19th century Americana.

Lynn Noble donated a copy of Sebastian Adams' magnificent 22 foot scroll, "A Chronological Chart of Ancient, Modern, and Biblical History," a chart that depicts the history of the world from biblical times to the mid-19th century. Compiled by Adams, an early pioneer of Oregon, as well as a clergyman and historian, and first printed in 1871, the libraries' copy is the fifth edition from 1883. In 2007, the Oregon State Library displayed its copy of Adams' scroll, prompting an article in the Salem News.

While the libraries' digital holdings of American newspapers from the early republic are rich, we have fewer bound editions of early 19th century American newspapers. Now, thanks to a generous donation by Steven Johnson and Jean Coblentz, the libraries hold a wonderful bound edition of the 1815 Boston Patriot, published by Davis C. Ballard. The bound Boston Patriot complements the American Newspaper Collection, 1794-1958, housed in Special Collections, which contains scattered issues of 266 American newspapers, including many from New England and the middle Atlantic states (largely clustered in the colonial period and the early republic,) as well as 19th and 20th century newspapers from Northern California.

Life Magazine photo archive and Google

Google has recently announced that it is hosting a the photo archives of Life Magazine, comprising millions (many apparently unpublished) of photos. View the archive at Google.

According to the Google blog,

"The Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; The Mansell Collection from London; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York and environs from the 1880s; and the entire works left to the collection from LIFE photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, and Nina Leen. These are just some of the things you'll see in Google Image Search today.

We're excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.

Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We're digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos."

Jefferson as a slaveholder, new works

Historian and New York Law School Professor Annette Gordon-Reed has recently published an acclaimed new book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton, 2008), which has been nominated for the National Book Award and favorably reviewed in the New York Times.

As a complementary work, B. Bernetiae Reed has compiled and self-published a fascinating look at the 619 slaves who lived at Monticello, replete with facsimiles of many original documents.

Reed's website provides information on the two volume work; our copy is in the stacks in Green Library.

Historical Advertising collections, Duke University Libraries

As political advertising is soon to give way to commercial products again, I wanted to highlight several great digital collections dealing with the history of American advertising and available online from the Duke University Libraries.

"The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University. The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke University's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library."

Visit Ad*Access.

A companion site, The Emergence of Advertising in America:1850-1920 is similarly rich in images and text.

"The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920 (EAA) presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture."

War & Dissent: The U.S. in the Philippines 1898-1915; New exhibit at the Presidio

A new exhibit, War & Dissent: The U.S. in the Philippines 1898-1915, opened October 22, 2008 at the Officers' Club in the Presidio of San Francisco. On display until February 22, 2009, it looks fascinating and includes many artifacts and photos from the period, including those of California soldiers who served in the conflict. In addition, "Bindlestiff Studio, a Filipino-American theater group based in San Francisco, has created “Shadows of War,” a unique multi-media production that will be staged each month during the exhibit."

Here is a description from the exhibit's website:

"This mixed media exhibit of photographs, San Francisco monuments, diaries, letters, political cartoons, recordings, maps, and flags looks at the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars from several points of view, including Filipino points of view, in nine themed galleries."

Blackwell Reference Online; Blackwell Companions to American History

The Stanford Library has recently acquired Blackwell Reference Online, an online library that contains over 350 reference volumes published by Blackwell. Of special interest to American historians is the series Blackwell Companions to American History

Each volume in the Blackwell Companions to American History contains chapters written by scholars in the field; the overall set contains titles ranging from A Companion to Colonial America to A Companion to post-1945 America. Whether writing a seminar paper or preparing for Ph.D. oral exams, the Blackwell Companions are an excellent resource to gain a grasp on current historiography. While we have print copies of each title in the circulating and reference collections in Green Library, the online editions allow for cross-searching of multiple titles in the series, including titles dealing with European and World history. Blackwell Reference Online also includes links to articles in History Compass, an e-journal of review articles in history published by Blackwell.

Check out the range of history resources in Blackwell Reference Online. It's an outstanding resource.

A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825

The new issue of Common-Place, an excellent online journal of early American history and culture which I've blogged about before, is devoted to politics in early America, with a special emphasis on voting.

In his introductory essay, historian Jeff Pasley highlights a wonderful new database of early American election returns titled "A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787-1825."

Compiled by Philip Lampi and sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives (with funding by NEH), the database offers a fascinating look at early American elections. As Pasley notes in his essay,

"The New Nation Votes project aims to make available to scholars and the public the life's work of Philip Lampi, an AAS employee who has been collecting early American election returns for more than four decades, most of that in his spare time. Elections before 1828 were long considered the "lost Atlantis" of American political history because there was no complete set of election returns to study. Lampi set out to map those lost coastlines, amassing his collection by hand, from old newspaper reports and local records. In recent years, working with my Beyond the Founders coeditor Andrew Robertson, Krista Ferrante, and others, Lampi has also been trying to correct the cultural myths he believes have emerged about the politics of the founding era in the absence of real electoral data."

Lampi has created a great blog highlighting some of the discoveries he's made compiling the data.

American election ephemera and campaign artifacts

As the election approaches, even the Stanford bookstore is selling action figures depicting Barack Obama and John McCain. Ephemera and artifacts from previous presidential campaigns were the subject of a wonderful 2004 exhibit titled "Get Out the Vote! Campaigning for the U.S. Presidency" (and website) at Cornell University's Department of Special Colletions.

The Museum of the City of New York is currently featuring an exhibit ("Campaigning for President: New York and the American Election") featuring items from the collection of Jordan Wright, a collector of political ephemera who died in June, 2008. Wright's collection is featured in a recent book, Campaigning for President (New York: Smithsonian Books, 2008), which is in Green Library's circulating collection.

For those researching American elections of the 18th and 19th centuries, Stanford users can also search the rich online collection of printed ephemera from the American Antiquarian Society through the database "American Broadsides and Ephemera"

Additional Sanborn maps online; Georgia, Utah, and South Carolina

Building on last month's post re. Stanford's acquisition of the digital Sanborn maps for California (published by ProQuest), a review article in the September 2008 number of the Journal of American History profiles and reviews three sites (all sponsored by university libraries) that provide historical Sanborn maps for Georgia, Utah, and South Carolina (and all in color!):

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Georgia Towns and Cities, 1884-1922

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Utah

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of South Carolina

Library exhibit: American Primers and Readers

Kathy Kerns, Curator for Education Resources and Head of Cubberley Library, has curated a wonderful exhibit showcasing the library's collection of American primers and readers. Currently on display in Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda on the second floor of the Bing Wing of Green Library, Stanford University, the exhibit is drawn from the collection of Richard L. Venezky, a leading scholar in the history of reading and literacy.

Richard L. Venezky (1938-2004), the Unidel Professor of Educational Studies, professor of computer and information sciences, and professor of linguistics at the University of Delaware, and Stanford Ph.D. in linguistics (1965) was a leading expert in the history of literacy and reading. In 2005, Venezky’s family gave his extensive collection of American textbooks to the Stanford University Libraries, where it is housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives.

Read more about the exhibit at:

American Primers & Readers

The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Digital Sanborn Maps Collection (1867-1970)

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps were created to help insurance companies assess risk when insuring properties. The maps delineate blocks, streets, and building numbers, as well as providing information about the physical properties of the buildings and neighborhoods. The collection, which includes 660,000 maps from 12,000 cities and towns, can be browsed by city or state, and maps can be magnified to examine detail. Click here for a key to symbols and abbreviations used by Sanborn map makers. For more information about historical maps and atlases click here.

For more information on maps and map collections, including the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, the Stanford Geological Survey, and Stanford’s Special Collections Antiquarian Map Catalog, visit the Branner Earth Sciences Library and Map Collections.

Common-place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life

Common-place is a wonderful online journal dealing with all aspects of early American history and culture. As its editors have noted,

"Common-place is a common place for exploring and exchanging ideas about early American history and culture. A bit friendlier than a scholarly journal, a bit more scholarly than a popular magazine, Common-place speaks--and listens--to scholars, museum curators, teachers, hobbyists, and just about anyone interested in American history before 1900. Common-place is a common place for all sorts of people to read about all sorts of things relating to early American life--from architecture to literature, from politics to parlor manners. And it's a place to find insightful analysis of early American history as it is discussed not only in scholarly literature but also on the evening news; in museums, big and small; in documentary and dramatic films; and in popular culture."

Sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and the Department of History at Florida State University, Common-place is published quarterly. The most recent issue (July 2008) features an essay by Caroline Winterer, Associate Professor of History at Stanford, titled "The Big Picture: The Ancient Mediterranean in early America."

Check out Common-place at:

http://www.common-place.org/

Proceedings of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions

In this season of political conventions, several researchers have asked about locating official reports for past Democratic and Republican National Conventions. In Green Library's Media-Microtext collection, we have microfilm copies of the official reports of the proceedings for both parties, complete through the mid-1960s:

Democratic: Official Report of the Proceedings (1832-1968): MFILM 329.1
Republican: Official Report of the Proceedings (1856-1964): MFILM 329.2

More recent proceedings can be found in both print editions and online, often by searching with the title "Official Report of the Proceedings of the Democratic/Republic National Convention," or "Official Proceedings of the Democratic/Republican National Convention."

New American historical newspapers available online

Building on an already impressive holding of digital historical newspapers, the Stanford University Libraries have acquired two new digital newspaper collections: The San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922) and 19th Century U.S. Newspapers.

The San Francisco Chronicle, an addition to the ProQuest Historical Newspapers Series, provides access to the complete run of the paper from its founding in January, 1865 through December 31, 1922, with full-page and article images in downloadable PDF format. The San Francisco Chronicle is cross-searchable with other newspapers in the ProQuest Historical Newspapers line, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune.

Containing over 1.7 million pages of newspaper content, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, published by Gale, provides access to 1.7 million digitized pages from five hundred U.S. newspapers, with special emphasis on titles published in the South and West. Titles include The Montgomery Daily Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama, 1847-1865), The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Georgia, 1826-1898), The Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, Arkansas, 1819-1898), The Emporia Gazette, Emporia, Kansas (1890-1919), The San Francisco Examiner (1880-1900), The Portland Oregonian (1850-53; 1861; 1862-64), and The Hawaiian Gazette (Honolulu, Hawaii, 1866-1899).

Both historical newspaper databases are available through the Databases and Articles page on the SULAIR website.

Volumes honoring Professor David M. Kennedy; histories of early Washington Territory/State

Professor David M. Kennedy was presented with the Stanford University Library's Warren Howell Award in May. To honor Professor Kennedy, the Library purchased five volumes dealing with the history of Washington State and Territory, Professor Kennedy's home state. Many relate to the 1859 "Pig War," the dispute between the United States and Great Britain over the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound and the subject of Kennedy's essay "San Juan Island, Washington: The 'Pig War' and the Vagaries of Identity and History" in Leuchtenberg, ed. American Places: Encounters with History (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 218-231.

1. STEVENS, Isaac I. A Collection of Seven Works and Speeches by Isaac Stevens with a Newspaper Article, all bound together in one volume.

The collection contains: 1. Campaigns of the Rio Grande and of Mexico. N.Y.: Appleton, 1851. 2. Governor's Message of the Territory of Washington...December 3d, 1856. Olympia: Geo. B. Goudy, 1856. 3. Address on the Northwest, Before the American Geographical and Statistical Society...December 2, 1858. Washington: G.S. Gideon, 1858. 4. Pacific Railroad-Northern Route. Letter...to the Railroad Convention of Washington and Oregon...May 20, 1860. Washington: Thomas McGill, 1860. From the library of the author's son, Hazard Stevens. Hazard Stevens inscribed the front wrapper. 5. A Circular Letter to Emigrants Desirous of Locating in Washington Territory. Washington: George S. Gideon, 1858. 6. Speech..on the Washington and Oregon War Claims. Delivered in the House of Representatives...May 31, 1858. Washington: Lemuel Towers, 1858. 7. Mounted newspaper article from the San Francisco Herald, April 15th, 1854 which contains a speech given in San Francisco on the Pacific Railroad survey. 8. Address to the Democracy and the People of the United States. Breckinridge and Land Campaign Documents No. 15.

Housed in Special Collections: XX(7515422.2)

2. A History of the San Juan Water Boundary Question, as affecting the
Division of Territory between Great Britain and the United States.
By Viscount Milton. [Fitzwilliam, William W.] London. Cassell, Petter, and Galpin. 1869.

Housed in Special Collections: XX(7512004.1)

3. (San Juan Islands) Haller, Granville O. San Juan and Secession. Possible relation to the war of the rebellion - Did General Harney try to make trouble with English to aid the conspiracy? - A Careful review of his orders and the circumstances attending the disputed possessions during the year…n.p: (Reprinted for R.L. McCormick), [1896].

Housed in Special Collections: XX(7514277.1)

4. Reminiscences of Washington Territory. Scenes, Incidents And Reflections of Pioneer Period on Puget Sound. Seattle, Washington: Privately issued, 1904.

Housed in Special Collections: XX(7514282.1)

5. [War Information Services] Pollard, Lancaster. The State of Washington. [Tacoma: Washington Historical Society, 1941.]

Housed at SAL3--for use in Special Collections: F891.5 .S72 1941

Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980

© NewsBank and the American Antiquarian Society, 2004

This new and growing collection includes historic Hispanic newspapers from around the country published in both Spanish and English. While the bulk come from New Mexico and Texas, there are also newspapers from California, Arizona, Illinois, Colorado, Louisiana, Florida, Kansas, and Missouri. The coverage ranges from one issue (Misispi, New Orleans, Louisiana, October 12, 1808) to an extensive run (Tucsonense, Tucson, Arizona, 1915-1931).

The newspaper text is searchable, images can be zoomed to enhance viewing, and issues can be downloaded as PDFs. Researchers can search within the Hispanic American Newspapers collection or search Readex’s entire collection of America’s Historical Newspapers, which includes early American newspapers from 1690 to 1922. Another useful feature is Nicolás Kanellos’ important reference essay “A Brief History of Hispanic Periodicals in the United States.” This essay is part of the larger reference work Hispanic Periodicals in the United States, Origins to 1960: A Brief History and Comprehensive Bibliography, available in the Lane Room at the Green Library.

For more information about historical newspapers online, see Newspapers.

Political Cartoons

Harper's Weekly has a site on Presidential Elections as Depicted in Political Cartoons, 1860-1912. Stanford University Libraries have various resources for research on political cartoons. They include:

• Reference books, such as Editorial Cartooning and Caricature: A Reference Guide
  
• Anthologies, such as Graphic Opinions: Editorial Cartoonists and Their Art
  
• Full-length studies, such as Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons
• Historical Newspapers, such as such as Harper’s Weekly, New York Times Historical, and the Los Angeles Times Historical. For these and other newspapers see Newspaper Online.
• Databases, such as the Archive of Americanas Broadsides and Ephemera collection.
  

Researchers can locate primary sources by searching newspapers by feature or document type and using the keywords cartoon and editorial cartoon.

Other online sources include the Dirksen Congressional Center's Editorial Cartoons Collection. For information on the history of comic art as a whole, see also the Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library, the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum, and the Virginia Commonwealth University Comic Arts Collection.

National Archives and Records Administration--Pacfic Region

The National Archives maintains a regional archive at San Bruno (also called National Archives San Francisco, or National Archives Pacific Region) which holds federal records from northern and central California, Nevada, Hawaii, American Samoa and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Additionally, the National Archives facility at San Bruno holds a large variety of federal records on microfilm. To determine microfilm holdings at the San Bruno facility, see
NARA's Microfilm Catalog

For more information about services, hours, and directions at NARA San Bruno, see the website for NARA Pacific Region.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Microfilm: FBI Files

The Green Library holds the microfilm of FBI files on Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Abbie Hoffman, César Chávez, and many other figures and organizations. See U.S. Microform Collection for more information.