Collection context
Summary
- Creators:
- Nast, Thomas, 1840-1902.
- Abstract:
- This collection contains 69 letters of American cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) and his family, including letters from Nast written while covering the Heenan-Sayers prizefight and Giuseppe Garabaldi's military campaign in Sicily (1860); a tour of Pennsylvania Civil War battlefields in the summer of 1863; an 1872 trip to Washington, D.C.; his 1873 lecture tour; and from Guayaquil, Ecuador (1902).
- Extent:
- 69 pieces in 1 box
- Language:
- English.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
Collection of letters of American cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) and his family -- his wife, Sarah Edwards Nast, and his son Thomas Nast, Jr. There are twenty five letters by Thomas Nast, chiefly addressed to his wife, written during his trips to England and Italy to cover the Heenan-Sayers prizefight and Giuseppe Garabaldi's military campaign in Sicily (1860), (this group also includes six letters addressed to William Luson Thomas, 1830-1900), the tour of Pennsylvania battlefields in the summer of 1863, the trip to Washington in the beginning of 1872, his 1873 lecture tour, and from Guayaquil, Ecuador (1902). Also included are three letters from Sarah Edwards Nast to her husband (1859 and 1869). There is also a copy (in the hand of Mrs. Nast) of a satire of Andrew Johnson ("So sayeth King Andy Johnson"), perhaps a caption to a political cartoon.
The rest of the collection are letters of condolence and official correspondence dealing with Thomas Nast's death and settling of his accounts. Correspondents include Herbert Henry Henry Davis Peirce and Theodore Roosevelt.
Selected Nast's letters were published by Albert Bigelow Paine in his Th. Nast : his period and his pictures (New York : Macmillan; London : Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1904).
- Biographical / historical:
-
Thomas Nast (1840-1902) was a German-born American cartoonist. In 1861 he married Sarah Edwards of New York; the family lived first and New York and later in Morristown, New Jersey. Nast contributed drawings to Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, the New York Illustrated News (for which he covered the Heenan-Sayers fight of 1860 and Garibaldi's campaign), and Harper's Weekly (in which appeared Nast's Civil War drawings, and later political cartoons). In 1902 Nast was appointed consul at Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he died of yellow fever on December 7, 1902.
- Acquisition information:
- Purchased from P. P. Appel, 1960, and William F. Kelleher, 1962.
- Arrangement:
-
Arranged chronologically.
- Rules or conventions:
- Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Indexed terms
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader Services.
- Location of this collection:
-
1151 Oxford RoadSan Marino, CA 91108, US
- Contact:
- (626) 405-2191