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Title: Harry Pidgeon Collection
Dates: 1869-1954; bulk dates 1921-1937
Collection Number: Collection # 6
Creator/Collector:
Harry Pidgeon, 1869-1954
Extent: 1 file box; 81 artifacts
Repository:
Los Angeles Maritime Museum
San Pedro, California 90731
Abstract: The Manuscript collection contains an original manuscript, correspondence and copies of publications. The Museum's collection
contains artifacts from the creator.
Language of Material: English
Access is by prior consent of the Archivist or Museum Director.
Copyright restrictions apply.
Harry Pidgeon Collection. Los Angeles Maritime Museum
Biography/Administrative History
Harry Pidgeon was born in Salem, Iowa on a farm in 1869. He emmigrated to the West Coast as a young man eager to learn woodworking
trades and found work in lumber mills of California and Alaska. He died in San Pedro at the age of 85 in 1954.
Scope and Content of Collection
Donated to the Cabrillo Beach Museum in 1980, the collection of objects was later transferred to the Los Angeles Maritime
Museum. The collection is from Harry Pidgeon’s voyages around the world beginning in 1921. Pidgeon made two of these, one
between 1921 and 1925 and the second between 1932 and 1937. One of his achievements prior to making the voyages was to build
his own vessel which he named “Islander”. The Museum’s collection of his 80 objects and tools reflects his woodworking skills,
the skills he gained by building the yawl himself with hand tools. Two collections of Pidgeon’s glass plate negatives are
found at local repositories: the University of California Riverside, California Museum of Photography holds 1550 glass plate
negatives taken between 1888 and 1936. At California State University, Fresno are 634 glass plate negatives detailing the
lumbering operations in California Sierras.
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San Pedro (Los Angeles, California)