Beatrice Borchardt Collection: Finding Aid mssHM 46715-46978

Contributing Institution: The Huntington Library

Title: Beatrice Borchardt collection

Creator: Borchardt, Beatrice, 1901-1975

Identifier/Call Number: mssHM 46715-46978

Physical Description: 7 Linear Feet (6 boxes)

Date (inclusive): 1846-1967

Abstract: The collection of Beatrice Edna Spring Borchardt relating to her research into her family's history.

Language of Material: Materials are in English.

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[Identification of item]. Beatrice Borchardt collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Emil Sebastian, January 1976.

Beatrice Edna Spring Borchardt (1901-1975) was the daughter of Edward Spring, and the granddaughter of New York merchant Marcus Spring (1810-1874) and his wife, reformer and educator, Rebecca Buffum Spring (1811-1911); the couple established a Utopian retreat in Eagleswood, New Jersey in the mid 19th century. Rebecca Buffam Spring moved to Los Angeles, California, in the 1890s, to live with her daughter Jeanie Spring Mackaye Peet and their home became a gathering place for artists, writers, and social reformers in the late 19th century. Jeanie Spring MacKaye Peet, had a brief marriage to James Steele MacKaye (1842-1894) which ended in divorce, then, in 1873, she married San Francisco newspaper editor Tremenheere Lanyon Johns (1839-1875), and finally, in 1881, Dr. Gilead Peet who died in 1887.

This collection contains the papers of Beatrice Spring Borchardt, chiefly relating to her research into her family's history, which included members of the Spring, MacKaye, Johns, and Peet families. Manuscript materials include unpublished drafts of biographical works by Borchardt about the family including writer Cloudesley Johns and his friendship with author Jack London; drafts of an autobiography by her grandmother Rebecca Buffum Spring; Borchardt's own unpublished biography of Spring entitled "Lady of Utopia"; a childhood journal (14 pages) of Arthur Loring MacKaye, dated from 1872 to 1885; a typescript copy of a poem, "Moods of Madness: Words," by Francis S. Saltus; and some miscellaneous pieces by Johns and his mother, Jeanie Spring MacKaye Peet, Rebecca Spring, and others. Correspondence chiefly consists of letters dating from the late 1940s to the 1950s between Borchardt and cousins about family history and some earlier letters of Johns, Herbert Peet, Arthur Loring MacKaye, Benton MacKaye, as well as family friend Florence Moore Kreider. There are also some letters between Johns and Charmian London, chiefly dating from the mid 1930s to the 1940s, as well as some correspondence of Jeanie Spring MacKaye Peet and Rebecca Spring dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are some printed items about family members as well as twelve photographs, including an 1897 card photograph of the Spring home at 504 North Soto Street in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles; a cyanotype photograph of Rebecca Spring with two women; studio portraits of Spring family members and one of Cloudesley Johns in 1900; and a snapshot of a Forest Theatre Production in Carmel, California (approximately 1915?). The earliest dated item is a copy in the handwriting of Rebecca Spring of a letter from Margaret Fuller, dated April 10, 1846. There is also a single letter from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Jeanie Spring MacKaye Peet and a letter from Charles Warren Stoddard to Arthur Loring MacKaye, dated December 6, 1896.

Processed by Huntington Library staff in 1980; in July 2023, Gayle M. Richardson created the finding aid.

Arranged alphabetically by author last name, with ephemera, printed materials, and photographs at the end.