Huntington Research, American History Resources

Early California Population Project

Burndy Library

Research Materials in American History

Before 1600: The collection is nearly complete in the very rare printed accounts of explorers from Columbus onward, and there is a large group of other foreign books relating to America.

1600 to 1800: The American imprints are remarkable (some 7,500 between 1640 and 1800), with the majority of the great rarities present. There are good runs of early newspapers, pamphlets, and many almanacs. The colonies are represented by such material as the laws of the separate colonies, a group of manuscript Orderly Books, and the Emmet Collection of letters by and papers relating to the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The printed books and pamphlets about the American Revolution are very extensive, certainly the best for serious research west of Chicago. There are large groups of the papers of individuals (such as Washington and Jefferson, and the Lewisson Collection of printed Washingtoniana) and of various families. The British points of view toward the colonies and the early republic are well represented in many English manuscript collections (such as the Loudoun Americana 1682-1780, the James Abercromby 1674-1787, the William Blathwayt 1657-1770, and some of the Grenville papers in the Stowe Collections). Various French collections (Destouches, Lafayette, and Vaudreuil-Cavagnal) contain much relevant material.

General American History Since 1800: There are many large collections of MSS; some samples are the Brock Collection (50,000 items, 1582-1914), of Virginia materials and the Samuel L. M. Barlow Papers (30,000 items, 1789-1905, dealing with economic, military, and political affairs). The Civil War holdings are particularly strong; the more than 50 separate collections range in size from a few hundred to 15,000 items: papers of notable Union and Confederate military and political leaders (such as Lincoln and Jefferson Davis) are present, as well as many letters and diaries of noncommissioned officers, privates, and ordinary citizens, and several collections dealing with Civil War medicine. Topics on which several MS collections are focused include the American Indian, religious movements, papers of the presidents, diplomacy, naval affairs, War of 1812, Mexican War, women's history, American historiography, and many others. There are at least several dozen additional collections of papers of families and notable individuals (such as the Francis Lieber Papers, 6,000 items, 1815-1888, mainly correspondence with prominent persons on political affairs, and the Richard Clough Anderson papers, 1,850 items, 1781-1892). The collection of printed books for the period since 1800 is very large: it is well-rounded for the Eastern seaboard through 1865, with excellent runs of newspapers, magazines, and almanacs; it is especially strong for economic, agricultural, social, marine, and political history. For 1865-1900, the printed collections are less dense; the research materials for the period since 1900 deal with political history and Western Americana.

Western Americana: The Library has the great majority of all the rare books needed for research purposes and approximately 300 MS collections (in size from 40 to more than 200,000 items), ranging form diaries and letters of the earliest explorers to modern business records. The Library has one of the largest collections of material on the westward expansion, including directories, diaries, letters, and early territorial imprints. There are more than 100 gold rush journals in mauscript, and many collections of papers relating to Western mining and transportation. The Mormon collection of manuscript diaries and journals is the finest outside of Utah, and there are worthwhile collections for the Pacific Northwest and New Mexico. For California, the Spanish-Mexican period is represented by a dozen substantial collections (such as the Galvez Papers on the settlement of Upper California, 1763-1794, 734 items); for the early American period, the collections are more numerous (such as the Abel Stearns Papers, 12,500 items); for the recent period the collections are very extensive (with such examples as the papers of the mining engineer James D. Hague, 24,000 items, 1824-1936, and Thomas R. Bard, U.S. Senator and first president of the Union Oil Company, 50,000 items, 1866-1958, or those of women's rights leader Caroline Severance, 8,400 items, 1875-1919, or those of Los Angeles mayor Fletcher Bowron, 20,000 items, 1934-1979). Printed county histories, local newspapers, rare local imprints, printed ephemera, and some 200,000 photographs offer a rewarding field for research.

Further Information On Manuscript Holdings

Guide to American Historical Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, 1979); Guide to Literary Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, 1979); Guide to British Historical Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, 1982); Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (2 vols., 1989); The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections; Guide to Archives and Manuscripts in the United States (New Haven, 1961), pp 28-38 and references therein.

Reference Works

The Library has about 350,000 volumes of reference works (editions, studies, biographies, general works) in the fields of British and American history and literature and related disciplines. This collection is selective rather than comprehensive and is intended to include books that scholars are likely to need in connection with research on Huntington MSS and rare books. Complete runs of the usual learned journals are present.

Aids to Research

In addition to the usual catalogs and marked copies of printed bibliographies, the Library has numerous special indexes for the assistance of scholars. These include: chronological and alphabetical files for continental holdings from 1501 to 1800; a chronological catalog of all pre-1800 Huntington books; a subject index to STC books (1475 - 1640); an extensive index (41 file drawers) of portraits available in the form of prints, drawings, and paintings here and in our photograph archives of original prints elsewhere; and a partial index of the more than 600,000 photographs in the Library.

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