Preliminary Guide to the Jay Monaghan Collection

Processed by D. Tambo
Department of Special Collections
Davidson Library
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone: (805) 893-3062
Fax: (805) 893-5749
Email: special@library.ucsb.edu
URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/speccoll.html
© 2003
Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Preliminary Guide to the Jay Monaghan Collection, ca. 1840s-1980

Collection number: Wyles Mss 20

Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara

Contact Information:

  • Department of Special Collections
  • Davidson Library
  • University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Santa Barbara, CA 93106
  • Phone: (805) 893-3062
  • Fax: (805) 893-5749
  • Email: special@library.ucsb.edu
  • URL: http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/speccoll.html
    Processed by:
    D. Tambo
    Date Completed:
    09 July 2003
    Encoded by:
    David C. Gartrell
© 2003 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Descriptive Summary

Title: Jay Monaghan Collection,
Date (inclusive): ca. 1840s-1980
Date (bulk): (bulk 1930s-1970s)
Collection Number: Wyles Mss 20
Creator: Monaghan, Jay, 1891-
Extent: 24.5 linear feet (47 document boxes, 4 records containers, and 5 oversize boxes.)
Repository: University of California, Santa Barbara. Library. Department of Special Collections
Santa Barbara, California 93106-9010
Physical Location: Del Sur (Boxes 1-51) and Del Sur Oversize (Boxes 52-56)
Language: English.

Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

None.

Publication Rights

Copyright has not been assigned to the Department of Special Collections, UCSB. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Department of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which also must be obtained.

Preferred Citation

Jay Monaghan Collection. Wyles Mss 20. Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Acquisition Information

Gift of Jay Monaghan and estate, ca. 1960s-1981.

Biography

The following biographical sketch was derived from: Donald C. Davidson, "James Jay Monaghan IV, 1891-1980; Mildred Eversole Monaghan, 1902-1980" in Soundings: Collections of the University Library (UCSB), v.12, no. 8, 1981; Irving Dilliard "Historian in Cowboy Boots: Jay Monaghan, 1893 (sic)-1980," in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, v.74, no.4, Winter 1981, and Ray Allen Billington, in his foreword to Jay Monaghan's Schoolboy, Cowboy, Mexican Spy, 1977).
James Jay Monaghan IV was born on March 19, 1891 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was known throughout his life as Jay Monaghan, the name under which he published his many works on western United States history, Abraham Lincoln and related subjects on which he was a recognized authority. Jay Monaghan's parents, James and Anna (Jackson) Monaghan were Quakers and they sent their son to the Friends Central School in Philadelphia for his early education. His pre-college education also included a period of schooling at Vevey, Switzerland. He entered Swarthmore College in 1909 where he obtained a B.A. in 1913. An M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania followed in 1918.
At the same time that Monaghan was pursuing his education, he was also actively engaged in a life of adventure centered in the American west that he would later chronicle. During his summer breaks in 1908 and 1909, he traveled across the country, spending some of his time working on cattle roundups in Wyoming. The spring of 1911 found Monaghan involved in the Madero revolution in Mexico where he participated in an uprising against Porfirio Díaz, which led to his own arrest. Following his release, he helped drive an army mule team to New Mexico and took part in a bear hunt in Sonora before returning to Swarthmore for his junior year. Monaghan later described these adventures in his Schoolboy, Cowboy, Mexican Spy (1977), his only autobiographical work. During 1914-1915, he taught school on the Uintah Indian Reservation in Utah.
After completing his graduate studies in 1918, Monaghan served during World War I as an instructor in aerial photography. Subsequently, he returned to the West and was owner and operator of sheep and cattle ranches in Utah and Wyoming for the next two decades. He also explored early trapper forts, made investigations into local historical sites and interviewed Indians for the Colorado Historical Society. The latter assignment was his first official foray into the world of historical scholarship. Undertaken in 1935, these interviews were a pioneering effort in what today is known as oral history.
Monaghan spent a brief period as a professional researcher in Kansas and Nebraska and worked as a supervisor of a 1930s WPA writers' project that analyzed and indexed Illinois newspapers. This was the beginning of his career in historical record keeping. There followed a number of appointments to the Illinois State Historical Library. Monaghan served there first as research editor (1939-1945), and later as State Historian to the Library (1946-1951). While holding the post of State Historian, he also served as Secretary of the Illinois State Historical Society and editor of its journal.
During this time, Monaghan undertook a number of writing and research projects. His definitive two- volume Lincoln Bibliography appeared in 1943 and in 1945 he published his first book in his own right, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers, a popular yet scholarly study of how Lincoln handled foreign affairs. It was one of the dozen books that he authored over the next thirty-five years along with numerous articles, essays and reviews, most emphasizing historical research on the Civil War and the American West.
After a brief period spent abroad, Monaghan and his wife Mildred (Eversole), whom he had met at the Illinois State Historical Library, relocated to California where he had accepted an appointment as Fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino. In 1953, they moved to Santa Barbara where Monaghan had been invited to serve as consultant to the Wyles Collection of Lincolniana at the Library of the University of California at Santa Barbara. His knowledge aided greatly in the development of the Wyles Collection and the helped enhance its reputation as a prominent collection on Lincoln, the Civil War, and westward expansion.
While located in Santa Barbara, Monaghan traveled to the Caribbean and South America under the auspices of the State Department to give lectures on Lincoln. Earlier he had been invited by the government of Liberia to perform the same task as part of that nation's observance of Lincoln Day. Monaghan, under a Fulbright Fellowship, spent the year 1954-1955 at the University of Sidney in Australia where he served as a lecturer on the American West while also researching Australia's connection to the search for gold in California. He later published The Gold Rush: Californians and Down Under, 1849-1854 (1966), based in part on this research.
Monaghan retained an active part in his role as Consultant to the Wyles Collection throughout the remainder of his life. He died in Santa Barbara, California on October 11, 1980. His wife, Mildred, died less than two weeks later

Scope and Content of Collection

The collection contains appointment books, biographical, personal and family files, correspondence, research files, scrapbooks, speeches and lectures, writings (including ms drafts), photographs and illustrations of Jay Monaghan, a Lincoln, Civil War, and western history scholar. Monaghan also played a major role in developing the William Wyles Collection at the UCSB Libraries.

Related Materials

Title: Monaghan [Jay] Oral History,
Date: ca. 1975
(
Identifier/Call Number: OH 10
).
3 cassettes (interviews by Gibbs M. Smith, UCSB Library Oral History Program); 1 cassette: Jay Monaghan, "A Freight Wagon Trip with Specimen Jones in the Year 1908;" 1 cassette: Jay Monaghan; Friends Open House, Sept. 14, 1975.
Title: McGuire[Harry] Collection
.
Identifier/Call Number: SBHC Mss 54
.
Papers and printed materials of an editor, publisher, writer who spent his later years in Santa Barbara. Monaghan was executor of his estate and brought the materials to UCSB.
Title: Storke [Charles A.] Collection
.
Identifier/Call Number: SBHC Mss 40
.
Research files and drafts of a biography of Storke's life, based on his autobiographical After the Bugle, with introduction and editorial work by Monaghan.

 

Series 1.  Appointment Books

Box 1

1952-1963

Box 2

1964-1974

Box 3

1975-1979

 

Series 2.  Bio/Personal/Family

Box 3 - 5

Includes early family correspondence, prints and negatives, awards and recognitions, bibliographies, clippings, early papers and reports

 

Series 3.  Correspondence

Box 6

1930s-1950s

Box 7

1960s

Box 8

1970s - 1980s, n.d.

Box 9

Alphabetical Files

Box 9

Bobbs-Merrill

Box 9

Civil War Centennial Commission

Box 9

Fulbright

Box 9

Little, Brown

Box 9

State Department

 

Series 4.  Diaries

Box 10

Diaries (apparently JM's), ca. 1909, 1920s

 

Series 5.  History Teaching

Box 10

History Teaching (UCSB H181), 1960s

 

Series 6.  Illinois State Historical Society

Box 11

Correspondence, minutes of meetings, constitution, memos, clippings, ca. 1941-1950

 

Series 7.  Research Files

Box 12 - 15

General

Abstract: [arranged alphabetically by subject - includes enquiries and responses, notes, copies of documents, articles, etc.]
Box 12

Alaska

Box 12

Arms and Ammunition

Box 12

Barrel

Abstract: [apparently mostly early articles by JM]
Box 12

Benton

Box 13

Black Hawk

Box 13

Buffalo and Elk

Box 13

Cartoon History

Box 13

Castella

Box 13

Chesapeake

Box 13

Custer, Libbie

Box 13

Dictator in Peru

Box 13

Expansion of Europe

Box 13

Kansas

Box 13

Lincoln

Box 14

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Box 14

McLane

Box 14

Memmler

Box 14

San Jose Convention

Box 14

Sandburg, Carl

Box 14

Scott, Dred

Box 14

Spiritualism

Box 14

Spiritualism and the Civil War

Box 14

Steel Traps

Box 14

Thesis (JM's PhD)

Box 15

Tousel Head Lincoln

Box 15

Traveller

Box 15

Turdhin, John B.

Box 15

Ute

Box 15

Vivid Expressions

Box 15

Western Course

Box 15

Wild West

Box 15

Wilde, Oscar

Box 16 - 23

Archivo General de Indias (Seville), Contaduria 851

Abstract: [photostats from microfilm and transcripts of documents, 1590-1603, including segments with titles such as Cuentas de Protectores de Yndios, Cuentas de los Proveedores generales y Pagadores, and Cuaderno de diferentes papeles]
Box 24

Department of Interior, Office of Indian Affairs (photocopies of records)

Box 25

Taylor, Bayard, and Darlington family

 

Series 8.  Scrapbook

Box 26

Mainly picture postcards of Europe, ca. early 1900s

 

Series 9.  Speeches and Lectures

Box 27

Speeches and Lectures (including trips for U.S. State Department)

 

Series 10.  Writings

Box 28 - 43

Monographs

Box 28 - 29

Australians and the Gold Rush: California and Down Under, 1849-1854 (University of California Press, 1966)

Box 30 - 31

Book of the American West (Julian Messner, Inc., 1963)

Box 32

Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849

Box 33 - 35

Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 (Little, Brown, 1955)

Box 36 - 37

Custer: Life of Gen. George A. Custer (Little, Brown, 1959)

Box 38

Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs (Bobbs-Merrill, 1945)

Box 38

Great Rascal: The Life and Adventures of Ned Buntline (Little, Brown, 1951)

Box 38

Last of the Bad Men: The Legend of Tom Horn (Bobbs-Merrill, 1947)

Box 39

Lincoln Bibliography, 1839-1939 (Illinois State Historical Society Library, 1943-1945)

Box 40

Overland Trail (Bobbs-Merrill, 1947)

Box 40

The Man Who Elected Lincoln (Bobbs-Merrill, 1956)

Box 41 - 42

Schoolboy, Cowboy, Mexican Spy (University of California Press, 1977)

Box 43

Swamp Fox of the Confederacy: The Life and Military Services of M. Jeff Thompson (Confederate Pub. Co., 1956)

Box 43

This Is Illinois: A Pictorial History (University of Chicago Press, 1949)

Box 44 - 45

Articles

Box 44

Ms drafts (mainly typescripts)

Box 45

Print copies

 

Series 11.  Photographs and Illustrations

Box 46 - 48

Photographs and Illustrations (mainly for publications; includes some original prints)

 

Series 12.  Slides and Film

Box 49

Slides and Film (includes 35mm b/w negative strips and microfilm)

 

Series 13.  Artifacts

Box 50

Two pieces of unidentified fabric

 

Series 14.  Miscellany

Box 51

Unidentified items

 

Series 15.  Oversize

Box 52

Photographs and Illustrations (mainly for publications)

Box 53 - 56

Scrapbooks

Box 53

Articles

Box 54 - 55

News clippings

Box 56

Reviews