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HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT Historian of the West

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HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT Historian of the West THE HISTORICAL TIMES NEWSLETTER OF THE GRANVILLE, OHIO, HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume XI Number 4 Fall: 1997 HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT Historian of the West One of the more famous historians to come from Granville is Hubert Howe Bancroft. Born in Granville in 1832, Bancroft went from student at Doane Academy to bookselling to history writing. Ann Natalie Hansen has written this delightful biographical account of Hubert Howe Bancroft. The editors of The Historical Times are pleased to publish for the first time Miss Hansen's original work on the life and times of this famous Granville native. HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT of these Puritan families, the Bancrofts Historian of the West moved westward into the Connecticut Valley taking part in local government, A transplanted and transformed the French and Indian War and the Yankee who rose from farm boy to American Revolution. This spirit of bookseller to author and publisher, restlessness continued in the family. Hubert Howe Bancroft holds a place in Azariah Ashley Bancroft, in 1845, American historiography which is often moved his family to New Madrid, disputed. The question invariably Missouri. The fertile bottom lands arises --- was he really an historian at yielded good crops for which there all, or merely a shrewd Yankee trader? were only poor markets, so after three It seems most fair to say that he was a years the trek was made back to little of each. Granville. In a few years, though, the West beckoned again and Azariah Massachusetts Roots Ashley was off to the gold fields of California where he stayed for two Bancroft's father, Azariah Ashley years. After another stint in Ohio, he Bancroft, was born in Granville, set out again for the West where he Massachusetts. He and his parents served as Indian agent at Fort Simcoe, emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1809, and Washington during the Civil War. He to Granville, Ohio in 1814, there finally settled down in San Francisco. joining their old neighbors from the Berkshires who had founded the village An Ohio Boyhood in 1805. Lucy D. Howe, at sixteen, also moved westward across the Hubert Howe Bancroft's boyhood Alleghenies from Vermont with her in Ohio was exactly what one would family who settled in the new Granville expect of such a time and place. He on a farm adjoining that of the hated milking the cow and raking hay Bancrofts. In time Azariah Ashley in the hot sun, and he hated going to Bancroft and Lucy Howe were married school. The town abounded in New and became the parents of Hubert England piety and thrift and love of Howe Bancroft who was born May 5, education; laziness was the root of all 1832 in Granville, Ohio. evil. As a consequence, Bancroft was reared in the strict Puritan tradition There was nothing spectacular with large doses of church-going on the about the Bancroft family. Of Anglo- Sabbath and all sorts of admonitions Saxon stock, John Bancroft had arrived for living a Godly life. The impression in Massachusetts from England aboard this made apparently was not very the James in 1632. Like so many other deep; in his adult life the church-going 2 habit lasted for only about ten years, and one of the largest of its kind in the due largely to the influence of his first world. Its owner admitted, " ...no one wife, Emily Ketchum to whom he was was more interested and absorbed in married in 1859. money-making while engaged in it than As for education, he seems to have gotten over his early dislike for school, Bancroft's book collecting was a aspiring to graduate from college, be natural outgrowth of the business, and elected to Congress, and perhaps the in turn, his writings were the outgrowth Presidency. With this ideal in mind, he of the library he so diligently formed. began his studies at Doane Academy in He had already published a handbook Granville, where he stayed for a year. of the Pacific Coast. One day in 1859 Realizing the need for money, he he conceived the idea of shelving accepted the offer of his brother-in-law, together the fifty to seventy-five titles a bookseller in Buffalo, New York, as a he had in stock on the subject for the clerk in his store. His decision ended convenience of the handbook's editor, the first distinct phase of his life. The William H. Knight. Sometime later he principle of industry which had been happened to notice some early deeply ingrained in him as a child, he California pamphlets in another San kept throughout his long life. This and Francisco bookstore, and he promptly the knack for quickly turning a dollar bought them. This was the beginning were the survivals of his Puritan of his search which was to extend all heritage. over the Western United States, New York and Philadelphia, Mexico, A Bookseller's Life Alaska, and various parts of Europe. The result was a collection of 60,000 After two attempts at bookselling volumes. Bancroft himself poked in Buffalo, the second more successful through the bookstores of London and than the first, and a brief interlude of Paris finding great quantities of books selling books by subscription in the dealing with his subject, and then went country around Mansfield, Ohio, on to Spain where he was disappointed Bancroft set out in 1851 for California in the result. He did not realize that by ship from New York going overland Spain's wealth of material was in across the Isthmus of Panama. From manuscript form in the archives of the humble beginnings, Bancroft profited government and Church, especially in in business and continued to expand the Casa Longa at Seville. He was not until the house of H. H. Bancroft and alone in his ignorance. Few others of Company of San Francisco, booksellers his day were aware of it either. and publishers, was unique in the West 3 All this only whetted his appetite working eight hours a day, four for the search. He had enlarged his hundred years to do this superficial job. field of interest from just California to He hired assistants to aid him in this Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Lower work, but then when he set to writing California and Pacific States, and a from these notes he found that he history of the Pacific States in popular needed the book to understand the one-volume form. After much mental connection. warfare he concluded to write a complete and detailed history of the The Literary Mill western half of North America. From this unsatisfactory beginning Installing a Librarian came the idea of an index to the whole for the Collection library. When finished, it was completely analytical of the subject In the spring of 1870, Henry matter of every scrap of material he Lebbeus Oak was installed as librarian had, whether it be books, periodicals, of Bancroft's collection. A native of newspapers, or manuscripts. Even the Garland, Maine, he had attended most seemingly insignificant subject Bowdoin College and was graduated was included, such as the texture of an from Dartmouth College during the Eskimo's hair. All together, more than Civil War. He was of invaluable twenty men worked on the project, assistance throughout the duration of some over a long period of time, and the project, beginning with the the cost mounted to $35,000 which cataloguing of the collection and the Bancroft regarded as well invested. removal of the books to the fifth floor of the new building on Market Street The writing moved forward with which was destined to become a the assistants working from eight to "literary workshop." twelve and from one to six with smoking freely allowed while they The Writing of History worked. By this time Oak was ably When the decision was finally made to assisted by William Nemos, whose write the history, Bancroft sought a surname was assumed to cover his way to abstract the necessary identity as a member of a distinguished information from his library. He first Polish family. He perfected the note- tried reading through the books and taking system, especially for beginners copying paragraphs which had been on the job so that they would become marked for the purpose. After doing familiar with "the respective merits of this with a dozen or so volumes, he authors, their bent of thought, and the calculated that it would take him, by age in which they lived, and the 4 fullness and trustworthiness of their The Publication of Books works." The complicated system of note-taking and filing in paper bags is First to be published was The detailed in Bancrofts book, Literary Native Races of the Pacific States of Industries, published in 1891. North America, in five octavo volumes, covering every phase of culture of all Bancroft allowed his note-takers to the Native American tribes that put anything they pleased into their inhabited the seaboard and the interior own words, but he insisted that when from Alaska to Panama. Over the the exact words of the author were used period of fifteen years thirty-four more they must be plainly indicated. The volumes appeared. Those dealing with notes pointed out contradictory the history of the Pacific Coast were statements of different authors and the published under the general title, The evidence for each interpretation. This Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, thus enabled Bancroft to draw his own avoiding any direct claim to authorship conclusions when he studied and wrote by not using a by-line as such. These from these notes. Minor sections of the were published by his own company, history were written by the more able and after 1886 by a subsidiary and experienced assistants and company formed for the purpose and incorporated by Bancroft into his own called The History Company.
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