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Charles Henry Bennett journals.
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Collection Overview

Title:

Charles Henry Bennett journals

Creator/Contributor:

Bennett, Charles Henry, 1829-1908, creator, creator.

Abstract:

Two bound journals of Charles Henry Bennett of Pennsylvania who journeyed to California via ship, worked in the gold fields of California, and then sailed as a passenger on a freighter to Hawaii before his eventual voyage back home around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. In their entirety, the journals describe Bennett's sailing around the world. The entries for these various episodes in his life are not in chronological order but switch back and forth between the two volumes. Some pages in both volumes have been torn or cut out and removed. Some of the dates of the entries do not include years or months. Some entries appear to be in a different hand and may have been dictated because of Bennett's sicknesses. Of significance, entries for his voyage home aboard the ship Memnon beginning on October 31, 1860, are found in both volumes with those in Volume 1 being incomplete due to missing pages, and those in Volume 2 being complete with a few additional entries as he neared the East Coast. The content in these entries are substantially similar. Pencil and pen-and-ink sketches of women and other figures are interspersed throughout both volumes. Also includes a detached one-page pen-and-ink drawing captioned "Bound for the diggins," depicting Bennett dressed and equipped for gold mining work seated on a horse. On the verso is a sketch of a clipper ship. Also includes one page of unrelated handwritten text
Begins January 14, 1849 with five pages of entries to February 7, 1849, aboard the brig Osceola describing the beginning of Bennett's ocean travel around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Several missing pages precede the next set of entries that describe a subsequent trip to Honolulu, Hawaii beginning on November 11, 1849 through December 17, 1849. The third section, with entries dated Wednesday, October 31, 1860 to December 24 and then March 28-31 [1861], is a broken sequence, due to missing pages, concerning a trip aboard the ship Memnon to the Sandwich Islands.
Begins August 5, 1849 with the brig Osceola dropping anchor in San Francisco Bay. The mostly undated entries continue for 41 pages describing work in the gold fields and ending on a "Saturday morning" [no month or year]. The next series of entries, beginning Wednesday, October 31 [no year], closely match the content found in Volume 1 for the October 31,1860 trip to the Sandwich Islands aboard the ship Memnon, and sometimes expand on them. The entries in this volume for this trip are also more complete than those in volume 1 and proceed to describe the entire voyage from San Francisco to the Sandwich Islands and then on to Canton and Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Coast of the United States. The final entry in this portion of the journal is dated April 7 [1861] "around 60 miles from Sand Hook" [New Jersey?].

Date:

1849 (issued)

Subject:

n-us-ca -- n-us-hi -- l------ -- p------ -- a-cc---
Voyages to the Pacific coast -- Personal narratives
Voyages and travels
Ocean travel
Gold miners -- California
Gold miners -- California -- Pictorial works
Gold mines and mining -- California
Voyages vers la côte du Pacifique -- Récits personnels
Voyages
journeys
Gold miners
Gold mines and mining
Ocean travel
Travel
Voyages and travels
Voyages to the Pacific coast
California -- Gold discoveries
Atlantic Ocean -- Description and travel
Pacific Ocean -- Description and travel
Hong Kong (China) -- Description and travel
Guangzhou (China) -- Description and travel
Hawaii -- Description and travel
California -- Description and travel
Californie -- Découvertes d'or
Atlantique, Océan -- Descriptions et voyages
Pacifique, Océan -- Descriptions et voyages
Hawaii -- Descriptions et voyages
Californie -- Descriptions et voyages
Atlantic Ocean
California
China -- Guangzhou
China -- Hong Kong
Hawaii
Pacific Ocean
Osceola (Bark)
Memnon (Clipper ship)
Osceola (Bark)
Bennett, Charles Henry -- 1829-1908 -- Diaries
Bennett, Charles Henry -- 1829-1908 -- Pictorial works

Note:

Purchase From Alamagre Books ; 2019.
Charles Henry Bennett (born January 21, 1829 in Minersville, Pennsylvania) was the eldest son of Daniel R. Bennett and Maria Ann Taylor. The family were practicing Quakers. He married Elizabeth Barret White (1836-1899). He died March 12, 1908 in Camden, New Jersey and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.
Charles Henry Bennett journals, BANC MSS 2019/170, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
In English.

Type:

Personal Narrative
Diaries.
Personal narratives.
Pictorial works.
Drawings.
Personal narratives.
Récits personnels.

Physical Description:

print
2 30 x 20 cm

Language:

English

Origin:

California