Bancroft reference notes for California, circa 1870s-1890s

Summary

Creators:

Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918

Abstract:

Consists of bibliographic and research notes pertaining to and used in the preparation of the History of California (volumes 18-24), California Pastoral (vol. 34) and California Interpocula (vol. 25), nine volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft's 39-volume, History of the Pacific States of North America published between 1882-1890.

Extent:

Number of containers: 4 boxes, 22 cartons Linear feet: 29.20

Language:

Collection materials are in English

Background

Scope and content:

Bancroft reference notes for California consists of bibliographic and research notes pertaining to and used in the preparation of the History of California (volumes 18-24), California Pastoral (vol. 34) and California Inter Pocula (vol. 25), nine volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft's 39-volume, History of the Pacific States of North America published between 1882-1890.

The research notes for the seven volumes of the History of California include early explorations of the west coast, settlement, societal, and land issues between 1550-1890. The notes are largely bibliographic citations along with brief descriptive text about society and customs of indigineous peoples, the Mission period, pioneers, and the development of rural and industrial areas into separate California counties and the establishment of a state.

The notes for California Pastoral volume cover early voyages, mission establishment, presidios, and regional developments during the Mission period. California Inter Pocula research and bibliography notes concern the turbulent period between Mexican rule of California and establishment of an effective State government when swelling populations descended upon California seeking gold.

The California notes as a whole originate from primary sources such as diaries, personal correspondence, and company logs and more abundant secondary source material such as pamphlets, journals, newspapers, and previously published histories. A few of the numerous subjects covered in the notes are finances, politics, land grants, mining, pioneers, transportation. A large group of notes document individual county and city development, including San Francisco and San Jose. The research notes about the Gold Rush period are informative concerning social character of gold seekers, cemeteries, crime, drinking, duels, epidemics, earthquakes, fires, shipwrecks and other hazards of early California life. Also covered are enterprises such as overland journeys, manufactures, journalism, railroads, stagecoaches and theater. Research subjects also include population groups such as immigrants, women, pioneers, Forty-niners, and the Chinese.

In addition, the material provides information about H. H. Bancroft's methods of compiling notes and references in preparation for writing chapter drafts for the Works volumes. The distinctive handwriting of many of Bancroft's assistants is revealed. The majority of notes were taken from manuscripts, books, and other sources that were part of Bancroft's Pacific Library collection during the years 1870-1890.

Consistently noting a subject heading in the left margin, the notes range from one-inch wide strips of papers citing bibliographic references to longer texts copied or summarized from sources, the majority of which were Bancroft's own book, manuscript, and clippings collection. The notes and strips were often pasted or pinned to larger sheets to construct draft outlines and text footnotes.

Biographical / historical:

Hubert Howe Bancroft was born in Granville, Ohio on May 5, 1832. After working for some time in the Buffalo, N.Y. book store owned by his brother-in-law, George H. Derby, Bancroft came to California in 1852 to establish a West Coast outlet for the shop. In 1855, after selling the initial stock, he went east and returned with sufficient books and stationery to open a San Francisco store the following year. Within two years, his firm on Montgomery Street began to grow into a publishing house, issuing such items as law books and legal stationery, texts and maps for schools, and music and piano sales.

In 1860, as an outgrowth of assembling research materials for publication of a Pacific Coast handbook, Bancroft began to collect regional writings: this was the beginning of his unparalleled collection of books and manuscripts on the West. Within a decade he had 16,000 volumes, encompassing not only California and the Pacific Coast as the central focus, but also British Columbia and Alaska to the north, the Rocky Mountains to the east, and Mexico and Central American to the south, extending back in time from the native Indian cultures of all these regions and the subsequent era of Spanish control. The collection continued to grow as a result of collecting trips to the east and Europe, as well as through extensive purchases at a number of major auctions. Eventually it included not only books and manuscripts, but pamphlets, maps, newspapers and other periodicals, and transcriptions of manuscripts made by his corps of copyists from originals still in private hands or in government and church archives. Bancroft and his staff also created original materials by interviewing pioneers whose recollections might not otherwise have been preserved, resulting in hundreds of early oral histories termed "dictations."

By 1868, a move became necessary to relieve overcrowding in Bancroft's expanding and prosperous Montgomery Street headquarters. He bought property on Market Street near Third, and began to build in 1869. In April 1870, the completed five-story building boasted a modernized steam engine in the basement to provide power for the printing presses. The first four floors accommodated nine departments, including wholesale and retail books, and stationary, music, law, and education sales; a subscription department; and a printing, bindery, and blank book production division. The fifth floor of the new Bancroft Building was a literary workshop, completely divorced from the business, where Bancroft's collections could be put to use. He engaged Librarian, Henry Lebbeus Oak, to catalog the works he had acquired.

Bancroft continued to collect materials as he planned a vast publication project of a series of histories of western North American, which in the end numbered 39 volumes: the History of the Pacific States of North America, also known as Bancroft's Works. First were five volumes on The Native Races (1874-1875), then three volumes on the History of Central America and six more on the History of Mexico, followed by two volumes on the Northern Mexican States and Texas, and one treating Arizona and New Mexico. All of these preceded his central topic, a seven-volume History of California (1886-1890), which were followed by nine more volumes on other parts of the west, and a number of more informal works, including Literary Industries, the author's biography.

Bancroft's ten year marriage to his beloved wife, Emily Ketchum Bancroft, ended upon her death in 1869. Left alone to raise their daughter, Kate, born in 1860, Bancroft devoted his energies to family and literary productions. He placed the full responsibility of managing the business interests of the firm with his younger brother, A. L. (Albert Little) Bancroft, creating a new partnership in 1860 under the title, A. L. Bancroft and Company. The business expanded and prospered under A. L. Bancroft's direction until a fire destroyed the Bancroft Building and its contents in 1886. Old resentments and quarrels erupted following the traumatic event which eventually severed the brothers personal and professional relationships.

Fortunately, the library (referred to as both the Bancroft Library and the Pacific Library) was spared. In 1881, it had been moved from the fifth floor of the Market Street location to a specially constructed fire-proofed brick building on Valencia Street. Following the fire and dissolution of his partnership with A. L. Bancroft in 1886, Hubert Howe Bancroft formed two new companies: The History Company, and the Bancroft Company. In August 1887, under these new imprints, the production, publication, and marketing of Bancroft's Works resumed in the rebuilt quarters at 723 Market Street, known thereafter as the History Building.

Throughout the West, Bancroft's numerous sales agents continued to sell subscriptions to his Works and the seven-volume Chronicles of the Builders. Following a successful marketing campaign which secured orders for more than 6,000 sets of volumes during the 1870's and 80's, the canvassing effort was abandoned in 1892. In the late 1880's, Bancroft's methods for writing and marketing his works came under attack by literary critics and several of his former employees, including Mr. Henry Oak and Mrs. Francis Fuller Victor. Oak and Victor claimed authorship for major portions of the Works that were credited solely to Bancroft, calling the historian's methods and reputation into question. The retail book and stationary store finally closed its doors in 1894, after a long and bitter price war had made the business unprofitable.

In 1905, Bancroft's accomplishments as an historian and collector were recognized by the University of California. The institution purchased the book and manuscript collections of the eminent historian, numbering over sixty-thousand items, for $250,000. Although the collector contributed $100,000 of the purchase price, the contents of the library had been appraised at twice the net cost to the University. The History of the Pacific States won recognition as an indispensable work for students of western history. The collection as a whole remains a distinguished primary source of unique books, maps, pamphlets, and documents on the early history of the West, from Alaska to Central America.

In his later years, Bancroft wrote several volumes (Retrospection, The New Pacific, In These Latter Days) expressing his political, moral, economic, and social concerns for a modernizing world. On March 3, 1918, at the age of 86, Hubert Howe Bancroft died at his home, having been struck by a street car several days earlier. He was survived by his daughter, Kate, and his four children (Paul, Philip, Griffing, and Lucy Bancroft) by his second wife, Matilida Griffing Bancroft. They were married in 1876 and she predeceased him in 1910.

Sources

• Harry Clark, A Venture in History: The Production, Publication, and Sale of the Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. University of California Press, 1973.
• John Walton Caughey, Hubert Howe Bancroft, Historian of the West. University of California Press, 1946.
• The Bancroft Library, University of California, The Bancroft Collection of Western and Latin Americana, June 4, 1998, http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/bancroft.html.

Acquisition information:

The Bancroft reference notes for California were part of the Bancroft Collection, purchased by the University of California in 1905.

Physical location:

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

Location of this collection:

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library

Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US

Contact:

510-642-6481

bancref-library@berkeley.edu

Website