H.H. Bancroft online

Lucky Baldwin

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Nov 16, 2013
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Hi All !

i stumbled across this today: Solano History Database: Bancroft Histories - Solano History Database

it's Hubert Howe Bancroft's "History of California" (volumes 18 to 24 of his 'Histories') that you can read online for free.

these volumes were published from 1885 to 1890 and cover the early history of Ca. from 1552 to 1890.

for anyone who isn't familiar with H.H. Bancroft, here's a short bio on him starting with his move to california (see the wikipedia entry for the footnote citations)

In March 1852, Bancroft was provided with an inventory of books to sell and was sent to the booming California city of San Francisco to set up a west coast regional office of the firm.[1] Bancroft was successful in building his company, entering the world of publishing in the process.[1] He also became a serious collector of books, building a collection numbering into the tens of thousands of volumes.[1]

In 1868, he resigned from his business in favor of his brother, A. L. Bancroft. He had accumulated a great library of historical material, and abandoned business to devote himself entirely to writing and publishing history.[4]

Bancroft's library consisted of books, maps, and printed and manuscript documents, including a large number of narratives dictated to Bancroft or his assistants by pioneers, settlers, and statesmen. The indexing of this vast collection employed six persons for ten years. The library was moved in 1881 to a fireproof building, and in 1900 numbered about 45,000 volumes.[4]

He developed a plan to publish a history in 39 volumes of the entire Pacific coast region of North America, from Central America to Alaska. He employed collaborators for the preliminary work, and then revised it all, and wrote the most important chapters himself. In 1886 the publishing establishment of A. L. Bancroft & Company burned, and the sheets of seven volumes of the history he had written were destroyed.[4]

Quite a man! i hear Ruth found the peralta map in Bancroft's collection.
 

Mackaydon

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The Bancroft Library in the center of the Berkeley campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. For many years, prior to the Internet, I used it as a primary source of information regarding California history--specifically shipwrecks. It holds a 'gold mine' (sorry, just had to) of historical information regarding the post-discovery of gold.
Don....
 

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