Oliver family photograph collections, circa 1880-circa 1920s

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Summary

Creators:
Oliver, William Letts, 1844-1918 and Oliver, Roland L. (Roland Letts)
Abstract:
The Oliver Collection consists of approximately 2700 glass plate negatives and photographic prints taken mainly by amateur photographer William Letts Oliver and his son, Roland L. Oliver. Subjects include maritime and yachting scenes, views of California and San Francisco Bay area, University of California at Berkeley, mining, logging, the Bohemian Grove, and the Oliver family.
Extent:
circa 2700 glass plate negatives and photographs 2047 digital objects
Language:
Collection materials are in English
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Oliver Family Photograph Collections, BANC PIC 1905.16898; BANC PIC 1905.17134 (items 233-236); BANC PIC 1905.17176; BANC PIC 1960.010; UARC PIC (various items), The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Background

Scope and content:

The Oliver Collection consists of approximately 2700 glass plate negatives and photographic prints taken mainly by amateur photographer William Letts Oliver and his son, Roland L. Oliver. The photographs date from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Subjects include maritime and yachting scenes, views of California and San Francisco Bay area, University of California at Berkeley, mining, logging, the Bohemian Grove, and the Oliver family. Also of note are earlier photographs of Chile and Peru dating from 1860 to 1867.

Photographs are attributed to William Letts Oliver, his son Roland Letts Oliver, and occasionally other members of the Oliver family. Other notable photographers represented in the collection include W. H. Lowden and Gabriel Moulin.

Also present are professionally produced lantern slides of images by various photographers, and a magic lantern projector and small number of magic lantern slides with illustrations from children's stories.

Biographical / historical:

According to a written statement by his son Roland L. Oliver, William Letts Oliver "was born in Valparaiso, Chile, August 6, 1844. [He] was educated in Edinburgh, Scotland, graduated from Edinburgh University as a mining engineer, and then went back to Chile. [In 1861, he went] to Peru, then to San Francisco in 1868 in time for the big earthquake of that year." His experience with nitrates led him to establish the California Cap Company, an explosives business in the East Bay (of the San Francisco Bay Area). In addition, he also owned a company that manufactured the Doak stationary engine used to power pumps on horse-drawn fire engines. He resided Oakland until his death in 1918.

Oliver "belonged to both the S[an] F[rancisco] Yacht Club and Corinthian Yacht Club taking a very active part in both." As the Maritime series of this photograph collection demonstrates, he was an avid sailor, and participated in, and won, may yacht races in the Bay Area.

He was also a member of the Bohemian Club and the Pacific Coast Amateur Photographic Association.

Arrangement:
Arrangement

This project brings together dispersed Oliver images from several separate Bancroft Library collections and the University Archives photograph collection. These collections were received and organized by the library as separate entities with different accession numbers. However, processing undertaken in 2001 revealed that items in the various collections were closely related, and that the existing divisions by accession number were largely meaningless. For example, often the negative for an image was found in one collection, while a print made from it was found in another. For this reason, the present finding aid is arranged by the subject matter of the image, in 17 artificial subject-based series, instead of by library accession number. These subject-based series were created by library staff, and do not reflect arrangement schemes used by the Olivers.

Numbering

Library staff created the numbering systems for all collections. If an earlier photographer's number was present, it was recorded as a note in the item description, but such numbers were not consistent enough to use as the basis for collection arrangement.

The largest Oliver collection is numbered BANC PIC 1960.010. For housing purposes, negatives are grouped by size, and library staff originally intended to use a different call number for each size-based grouping. However, this plan was never fully carried out, and 1960.010 was retained as the base call number. (Early collection documentation sometimes cites the number 1960.011 also, but this number has not been applied to the material.)

The first library processors of the collection also assigned item numbers to many of the images, but they started a new numbering series with each size grouping. The result was that item numbers were not unique, but were dependent upon the negative size.

During the processing project of 2001, the 1960.010 call number was kept, but divided into series in order to accommodate the non-unique item numbers previously assigned. Negatives measuring 4x5 inches or smaller (items 1-611) became Series 1 (BANC PIC 1960.010 ser. 1 :001-611). Negatives larger than 4x5 but smaller than 8x10 inches became Series 2 (BANC PIC 1960.010 ser. 2 :0001-1379). These series are useful for identification and retrieval only, and are independent of the subject groupings by which this finding aid is arranged. For storage purposes, the negatives are designated as 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10, but actual measurements tend to be smaller than the stated storage size.

Unnumbered items that had never been incorporated into the collection were given numbers by the project archivist in 2001. A group of small format negatives were added to the end of series 1, (numbers :612- :633.) Larger format negatives (housed as 8x10) that were previously listed as part of a so-called "separate series, with library numbering," were given previously unused item numbers from Series 2 (ser. 2 :0348- :0381). The item numbers :0382- :0417 remain unused numbers in Series 2.

The rest of the formerly unnumbered prints, negatives and lantern slides have been assigned numbers at the end of series 2 (BANC PIC 1960.010 ser. 2 :1379- ). An attempt was made to keep items together by subject as they were previously stored.

  • :1380- :1726 Bohemian Club and Bohemian Grove
  • :1727- :1977 Various Subjects
  • :2078- :2114 Lantern Slides

The items 1960.010. ser. 2 :0268-0289 are missing.

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.
Rules or conventions:
Finding Aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard
Note:

Curator of the Bancroft Pictorial Collection: Jack von Euwe

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research.

Terms of access:

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 to The Bancroft Library. See: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Oliver Family Photograph Collections, BANC PIC 1905.16898; BANC PIC 1905.17134 (items 233-236); BANC PIC 1905.17176; BANC PIC 1960.010; UARC PIC (various items), The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Location of this collection:
University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US
Contact:
510-642-6481
bancref-library@berkeley.edu
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