Collection Summary
Information for Researchers
Administrative Information
Biography
Scope and Content of Collection
Collection Summary
Collection Title: Bancroft reference notes for the western states, excluding
California
Date (inclusive): circa 1870s-1890s
Collection Number: BANC MSS B-C 8
Collector:
Bancroft, Hubert Howe,
1832-1918
Extent:
Number of containers: 28 cartons
Linear feet: 35
Repository: The Bancroft Library.
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Abstract: Consists of bibliographic and research notes pertaining to and used
in preparation of v. 25-31 of Hubert Howe Bancroft's History of the Pacific states of North
America. His research notes track the settlement and development by Europeans and American
pioneers of the western states, including various political, religious, military, and
economic upheavals, changes, and developments in each new state or territory between the
1450s and the 1890s. References are to both primary sources, including ship's logs, diaries,
and military and church correspondence, and secondary sources, including pamphlets,
journals, and newspapers. The variation in scripts found in these handwritten notes provide
evidence of the team of researchers employed by H.H. Bancroft. The majority of notes were
taken from manuscripts and books which were part of Bancroft's collection during the years
1879 to 1890.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite
and advance notice may be required for use. For current information on the location of these
materials, please consult the library's online catalog.
Information for Researchers
Access
Collection is open for research.
Publication Rights
Materials in this collection may be protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17,
U.S.C.). In addition, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by terms of
University of California gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and
publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Transmission or reproduction of materials
protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of
the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited
without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively
with the user.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials
must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720-6000. See:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html .
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Bancroft Reference Notes for the Western States, excluding
California, BANC MSS B-C 8, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Related Collections
Library
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Records of the Library and Publishing Companies, BANC MSS B-C
7
Hofmann & Curtis Architects, Specifications ... in the erection of a
… library building for H. H. Bancroft, 1881, BANC MSS 73/122 c: [no.] 64
Catalogue of the Bancroft Library of Pacific Coast Books, Maps, and Manuscripts,
BANC MSS B-C 4
William Henry Knight, Bancroft Library MS Scrapbooks, 1860-64, BANC MSS C-E 200
San Francisco Bulletin index, 1855-1872, BANC MSS B-C 2
Publishing Companies
Hubert Howe Bancroft,
In these Latter Days, BANC MSS B-A 1
John S. Hittell,
A History of the City of San Francisco, 1878, BANC
MSS 90/19 c
History Company.
The History Company periodical index, BANC MSS B-C
3
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Letters and papers from Mexico, 1886-91, BANC MSS M-M 384
Porfirio Diaz Collection of Papers, 1881-93, BANC MSS M-M 392
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Authorities quoted in the
History of
California,
BANC MSS B-C 1
Thomas Savage, Report of labors in archives and procuring material for the History
of California, 1876-79, BANC MSS C-E 191
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Preliminary notes and plans for the
Pioneer
Register,
BANC MSS C-E 170
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Correspondence relating to the History of Oregon, 1863-1889,
BANC MSS P-A 169
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Correspondence, BANC MSS C-B 362
Bancroft Reference notes for Central America, BANC MSS B-C 9
Bancroft Reference notes for Mexico, BANC MSS B-C 10
Bancroft Reference notes for British Columbia and Alaska, BANC MSS B-C 11
Bancroft Reference notes for California, BANC MSS B-C 12
Bancroft Reference notes--Bibliography, BANC MSS B-C 13
Bancroft Reference notes on the conquest of Mexico, BANC MSS B-M 1
Bancroft Reference notes, BANC MSS 97/31 c
Bancroft Miscellaneous Newspaper Clippings, 1860-1890, BANC MSS B-C 14
Henry Cerruti, Sketches of the California Pioneers, BANC MSS C-E 65
Ivan Petroff, Journal of Trip to Alaska in Search of Information for the Bancroft
Library, 1878, BANC MSS P-K 62
Harry Bishop Hambly, Information for the Bancroft Library, 1936, BANC MSS C-D 5081
Henry Lebbeus Oak, Correspondence and papers, BANC MSS C-B 387
Henry Lebbeus Oak, Letters from H.H. Bancroft and diary, 1874-87, BANC MSS 67/153
Frances Fuller Victor, Correspondence and notes relating to the History of Oregon,
1865-[ca. 1886], BANC MSS P-A 170
A.L. Bancroft & Co., Account of stock, Jan. 1, 1879, BANC MSS C-E 195
A.L. Bancroft & Co., Resolutions for the year 1890, BANC MSS C-E 196
Bancroft family
Albert Little Bancroft,
My Brother Hubert Howe Bancroft, 1907, BANC
MSS 73/122 c:109
Hubert Howe Bancroft family papers, BANC MSS 73/64 c
Bancroft family, Family genealogical data, 1886-1907, BANC MSS 89/91 c
Hubert Howe Bancroft letters to his family, 1882-1918, BANC MSS 77/169 c
Indexing Terms
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
library's online public access catalog
Arizona--History
Colorado--History
Dakota Territory--History
Idaho--History
Montana--History
Nevada--History
New Mexico--History
Northwest Coast of North
America--History
Oregon--History
Texas--History
Utah--History
Washington (State)--History
Wyoming--History
Notes
Administrative Information
Acquisition Information
The Bancroft Reference Notes for the Western States, excluding California, were part of
the Bancroft Collection purchased by the University of California in 1905.
Biography
Hubert Howe Bancroft was born in Granville, Ohio on May 5, 1832. After working for some
time in the Buffalo, N.Y. book store owned by his brother-in-law, George H. Derby, Bancroft
came to California in 1852 to establish a West Coast outlet for the shop. In 1855, after
selling the initial stock, he went east and returned with sufficient books and stationery to
open a San Francisco store the following year. Within two years, his firm on Montgomery
Street began to grow into a publishing house, issuing such items as law books and legal
stationery, texts and maps for schools, and music and piano sales.
In 1860, as an outgrowth of assembling research materials for publication of a Pacific
Coast handbook, Bancroft began to collect regional writings: this was the beginning of his
unparalleled collection of books and manuscripts on the West. Within a decade he had 16,000
volumes, encompassing not only California and the Pacific Coast as the central focus, but
also British Columbia and Alaska to the north, the Rocky Mountains to the east, and Mexico
and Central American to the south, extending back in time from the native Indian cultures of
all these regions and the subsequent era of Spanish control. The collection continued to
grow as a result of collecting trips to the east and Europe, as well as through extensive
purchases at a number of major auctions. Eventually it included not only books and
manuscripts, but pamphlets, maps, newspapers and other periodicals, and transcriptions of
manuscripts made by his corps of copyists from originals still in private hands or in
government and church archives. Bancroft and his staff also created original materials by
interviewing pioneers whose recollections might not otherwise have been preserved, resulting
in hundreds of early oral histories termed "dictations".
By 1868, a move became necessary to relieve overcrowding in Bancroft's expanding
and prosperous Montgomery Street headquarters. He bought property on Market Street near
Third, and began to build in 1869. In April 1870, the completed five-story building boasted
a modernized steam engine in the basement to provide power for the printing presses. The
first four floors accommodated nine departments, including wholesale and retail books, and
stationary, music, law, and education sales; a subscription department; and a printing,
bindery, and blank book production division. The fifth floor of the new Bancroft Building
was a literary workshop, completely divorced from the business, where Bancroft's
collections could be put to use. He engaged Librarian, Henry Lebbeus Oak, to catalog the
works he had acquired.
Bancroft continued to collect materials as he planned a vast publication project of a
series of histories of western North American, which in the end numbered 39 volumes: the
History of the Pacific States of North America, also known as
Bancroft's
Works. First were five volumes on The Native Races
(1874-1875), then three volumes on the History of Central America and six more on the
History of Mexico, followed by two volumes on the Northern Mexican States and Texas, and one
treating Arizona and New Mexico. All of these preceded his central topic, a seven-volume
History of California (1886-1890), which were followed by nine more volumes on other parts
of the west, and a number of more informal works, including
Literary Industries,
the author's biography.
Bancroft's ten year marriage to his beloved wife, Emily Ketchum Bancroft, ended
upon her death in 1869. Left alone to raise their daughter, Kate, born in 1860, Bancroft
devoted his energies to family and literary productions. He placed the full responsibility
of managing the business interests of the firm with his younger brother, A. L. (Albert
Little) Bancroft, creating a new partnership in 1860 under the title, A. L. Bancroft and
Company. The business expanded and prospered under A. L. Bancroft's direction until
a fire destroyed the Bancroft Building and its contents in 1886. Old resentments and
quarrels erupted following the traumatic event which eventually severed the brothers
personal and professional relationships.
Fortunately, the library (referred to as both the Bancroft Library and the Pacific Library)
was spared. In 1881, it had been moved from the fifth floor of the Market Street location to
a specially constructed fire-proofed brick building on Valencia Street. Following the fire
and dissolution of his partnership with A. L. Bancroft in 1886, Hubert Howe Bancroft formed
two new companies: The History Company, and the Bancroft Company. In August 1887, under
these new imprints, the production, publication, and marketing of Bancroft's
Works resumed in the rebuilt quarters at 723 Market Street, known
thereafter as the History Building.
Throughout the West, Bancroft's numerous sales agents continued to sell
subscriptions to his
Works and the seven-volume
Chronicles of the
Builders.
Following a successful marketing campaign which secured orders for more
than 6,000 sets of volumes during the 1870's and 80's, the canvassing
effort was abandoned in 1892. In the late 1880's, Bancroft's methods for
writing and marketing his works came under attack by literary critics and several of his
former employees, including Mr. Henry Oak and Mrs. Francis Fuller Victor. Oak and Victor
claimed authorship for major portions of the
Works that were credited solely
to Bancroft, calling the historian's methods and reputation into question. The
retail book and stationary store finally closed its doors in 1894, after a long and bitter
price war had made the business unprofitable.
In 1905, Bancroft's accomplishments as an historian and collector were recognized
by the University of California. The institution purchased the book and manuscript
collections of the eminent historian, numbering over sixty-thousand items, for $250,000.
Although the collector contributed $100,000 of the purchase price, the contents of the
library had been appraised at twice the net cost to the University.
The History of
the Pacific States
won recognition as an indispensable work for students of
western history. The collection as a whole remains a distinguished primary source of unique
books, maps, pamphlets, and documents on the early history of the West, from Alaska to
Central America.
In his later years, Bancroft wrote several volumes
(Retrospection, The New Pacific,
In These Latter Days)
expressing his political, moral, economic, and social
concerns for a modernizing world. On March 3, 1918, at the age of 86, Hubert Howe Bancroft
died at his home, having been struck by a street car several days earlier. He was survived
by his daughter, Kate, and his four children (Paul, Philip, Griffing, and Lucy Bancroft) by
his second wife, Matilida Griffing Bancroft. They were married in 1876 and she predeceased
him in 1910.
Sources
-
Harry Clark,
A Venture in History: The Production, Publication, and Sale of
the Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft.
University of California Press,
1973.
-
John Walton Caughey,
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Historian of the West.
University of California Press, 1946.
-
The Bancroft Library, University of California,
The Bancroft Collection of
Western and Latin Americana
, June 4, 1998,
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/bancroft.html .
Scope and Content of Collection
Bancroft Reference Notes for the Western States, excluding California, ca. 1870s-1890s,
consist of bibliographic and research notes pertaining to and used in the preparation of
volumes 25-31 of Hubert Howe Bancroft's,
History of the Pacific States of
North America,
including the
History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming,
the History of Utah,
the History of Northwest Coast
(v. I-II),
the History of Oregon (v. I-II), and
the History of
Washington, Idaho, and Montana.
The research notes as a whole track the settlement
and development by Europeans and American pioneers of the western states. The notes follow,
in a chronological manner, various political, religious, military, and economic upheavals,
changes, and developments in each new state or territory between the 1450s and the 1890s.
The western states notes reflect primary sources, such as ship's logs, diaries,
and military and church correspondence. Secondary source notes, such as pamphlets, journals,
and newspapers, focus on the interaction of the settlers and the native races, as well as
internal relations in establishing governmental regulations. Of note is the vast amount of
research preserved for the History of Oregon; Utah also presents a remarkable quantity of
research concerning Mormon history.
Notably, the variation in scripts found in these handwritten notes provide evidence of the
team of researchers employed by H.H. Bancroft. While the assistants compiled notes using a
systematic method of topic research, Bancroft himself collated and edited the notes, often
in a literal cut-and-paste fashion. In this manner, he carefully documented the sources he
intended to draw upon and quote as authorities while constructing chapter outlines and
textual drafts for the history of the western states volumes.