Carlton L. Andrus School Papers

Title: Carlton L. Andrus School Papers

Dates: 1897-1917

Collection Number: 1989-162

Creator/Collector: Andrus, Carlton L., 1888-1963

Extent: 1.5 linear feet (2 boxes)

Repository: History San Jose Research Library

Abstract: Report cards, lecture notes, school work of Carlton Andrus from San Jose High School, University of the Pacific, and Stanford University medical school. Includes Andrus' Stanford University thesis, as well as one folder of material from the St. Luke's Hospital Clinical Club Diagnostic Section.

Language of Material: English

Open to the public for research by appointment.

Contact History San Jose Research Library & Archives for publication and reproduction information.

[Identification of item]. Carlton L. Andrus School Papers. Collection Number: 1989-162. History San Jose Research Library

The papers were donated to the San Jose Historical Museum in 1989 by an unknown donor.

According to the biographical files of the United States Navy, Rear Admiral Carlton Leverett Andrus was born February 10, 1888 at Monrovia, California, son of Rudolph Case Andrus and Emma Gilbert Andrus. He attended both the University of the Pacific and Stanford University, where he graduated with both an A.B. (1915) and a Doctor of Medicine (1917). He was appointed Assistant Surgeon with the rank of Lieutenant in the Medical Corps of the U.S. Naval Reserve Force on August 21, 1917. He was transferred to the Medical Corps of the U.S. Navy on January 1, 1918, and progressed in grade until his promotion to Commodore, April 3, 1945. His promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral was approved by the President on December 9, 1946, and confirmed by the Senate on January 29, 1947, to date from July 15, 1942. He retired effective February 1, 1950. (Additional details can be found in the online Naval biography files). Earlier details of Andrus' life are described in an autobiographical essay he wrote at the University of the Pacific in 1910, part of these school papers. According to this essay, his family moved to San Jose from Monrovia when Carlton was 7 months old (they lived for five years in a house on north Ninth Street until they purchased a house in East San Jose), and he began elementary school in East San Jose when he was 8 years old, after illness kept him out of school. Andrus attended San Jose State Normal School as well as San Jose High School. In 1904 his father took the family on a six-month trip to the Atlantic Coast, stopping at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Niagara Falls, and other east coast attractions. He resumed high school in 1905 until the 1906 earthquake crippled the school, and he continued his studies at the California School of Mechanical Arts in San Francisco. He returned to the new San Jose High School to graduate in 1909. Andrus worked summer jobs on ranches, working for businesses in San Francisco and Pacific Grove, and fishing and hunting with his father. He was 21 before he finished high school, and went to work in Inyo County on an aerial tramway. He was forced to return to San Jose when he contracted typhoid fever, and worked at the carpenter trade after six weeks of illness. In May 1910 he says that he started working on a haypress to earn enough money to attend Stanford University, but after five and a half weeks he was forced to undergo an operation for blood poisoning, making it financially impossible to attend. Instead, he entered the University of the Pacific, majoring in biology, before he eventually returned to Stanford.

Report cards, lecture notes, school work of Carlton Andrus from San Jose High School, University of the Pacific, and Stanford University medical school. Includes Andrus' Stanford University thesis, as well as one folder of material from the St. Luke's Hospital Clinical Club Diagnostic Section.