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Register of the Burrell Family Papers,
1824-1882
Mss132
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Table of contents
Title: Burrell Family Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1824-1882
Collection number: Mss132
Creator:
Reginald R. Stuart
Extent: 0.25 linear ft.
Repository:
University of the Pacific. Library. Holt-Atherton Department of
Special Collections
Stockton, CA 95211
Shelf location: For current information on the location of
these materials, please consult the library's online catalog.
Language: English.
Collection is open for research.
[Identification of item], Burrell Family Papers, Mss132, Holt-Atherton
Department of Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
The Burrells were a pioneer family of Santa Clara County, California.
Lyman J. Burrell was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts(1801). By 1816 his family
had moved to Lorain County Ohio and in 1839 he there married Clarissa Wright
(1805-1857).
Clarissa had attended Oberlin College. Her brother, Elizur, Jr., a Yale
graduate, was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Western
Reserve University, national secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society (1833-40)
and an editor of abolitionist journals. He was associated as an editor with
William Lloyd Garrison and with John Greenleaf Whittier. Besides his reforming
interests (woman suffrage and insurance laws protecting policy holders) Elizur
was a translator of La Fontaine's fables, and, the first Insurance Commissioner
of Massachusetts. He is remembered today as the "Father of American Life
Insurance." Two of Clarissa Wright Burrell's sisters married ministers and two
were wives of Doctors. Her youngest brother, James, became a Presbyterian
minister and subsequently migrated to California (1869).
The Burrells had three children, a son, Birney (b. 1840), and two
daughters, Martha and Clara. In 1849 Lyman Burrell went overland to California
for gold. In the winter of 1850-51 Burrell returned to Ohio with $2,000 in gold
dust. A year later he returned to California to farm near Alviso, renting land
from Cary Peebels (1852) and the following year from James Lick. His wife and
children joined him there in early 1853. Burrell soon decided, however, that
the South Bay climate was harmful to his wife, and, with his land titles
hopelessly unresolved, he homesteaded in the Santa Cruz Mountains. These hills,
bordering the coastal valleys, lay outside any Spanish land grant and were
therefore public domain. Although the Burrell family soon experienced
prosperity, they also faced hard work, a frugal life-style and ill health.
Clarissa did not improve and died sometime in 1857.
Reginald R. Stuart obtained access to the Burrell family papers and
created this collection of transcriptions in the course of publishing some of
Clarissa Wright Burrell's letters in the California Historical Society
Quarterly, 28:4; 29:1 & 2 (1949-1950). Stuart later republished those items
bearing an "*" in the container list as a monograph titled, The Burrell
Letters: Including Excerpts from Birney Burrell's Diary and "Reminiscences of
an Octogenarian"; A Contribution to Santa Clara County History from the
Original Manuscripts (1950). This publication includes a few photographs of the
family not found in Ms132. A part of the collection has also appeared in the
Summit (Calif.) Literary Society's irregularly published periodical Mountain
Echoes or in the Redwood Social Club's Mountain Messenger.
The Burrell family collection includes family correspondence, diaries,
family genealogy notes, reminiscences, farm accounts and Reginald R. Stuart's
research notes. The Burrell family letters are a straightforward account of the
rigors of the overland and sea journeys to California and the trials of placer
mining. They are most unique in their later recital of pioneer ranch life in
the California foothills, particularly in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Lyman and
Clarissa Burrell's son, Birney, kept a diary for several years. His 1852 diary
covers the sea voyage to California, while the 1853 to 1862 diaries depict a
life of hard farm work, gathering and hunting food in the mountains and doing
odd jobs for neighbors.