Newsletter of The Friends of The Bancroft Library BANCROFTIANA Number 136 • Universit y of California, Berkeley • Spring 2010 Bancroft to the Core: The Bancroft Library at 150 he Bancroft Library’s major ex- West, Mexico, Central America, and History Henry Morse Stephens and Thibition for Spring 2010 (March western Canada—the largest library UC President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, 5 – July 2) celebrates the library’s devoted to a single region in the was the first major research collec- sesquicentennial with an exhibition de- country. tion to be acquired by the University. voted to the collecting and collections Realizing the value of The Ban- In Wheeler’s words, the acquisition of Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918). croft Library for the pursuit of original of The Bancroft Library “means the Bancroft arrived in San Francisco historical research, the University of emergence of the real University of in 1852 determined to sell books. The California purchased it in 1905 and study and research out of the midst of 19-year-old Midwest transplant found moved it to the campus two weeks the Colleges of elementary teaching more pleasure—and profit—peddling after the San Francisco Earthquake and training.” books than digging for gold and by of 1906. This acquisition, through On the 150th anniversary of 1856 had founded his own bookstore the vision and efforts of Professor of Bancroft’s initial foray into book and publishing house, H.H. Bancroft Continued on page 3 and Co. In 1860 Bancroft initiated a new phase in his business career when he began collecting books. Far from constituting a library, this initial col- lection was created to help the aspiring publisher enter the burgeoning publish- ing market on “Pacific Slope” topics. As Bancroft became more interested in collecting books, the bookseller gave way to the collector and historian. Ban- croft himself recollected, in Literary Industries, that “gradually and almost imperceptibly . the area of my efforts enlarged. From Oregon it was but a step to British Columbia and Alaska; and as I was obliged for California to go to Mexico and Spain it finally became settled to my mind to make the western half of North America my field, including in it the whole of Mexico and Central America.” The result was a library that by the turn of the 20th century included 50,000 volumes as well as hundreds of “dic- tations” (early oral histories), manu- scripts, maps, pictorial materials, and other original records documenting the “Our Gallery of Cranks, No. 3: The Boss Historian.” Front cover of The Wasp magazine, history of California and the American April 18, 1885. Newsletter of The Friends of The Bancroft Library From the Director The ancroftB Library at 150 . and Counting we again stopped at the historical alcove was the very prototype of today’s Silicon and he said, ‘Mr. Knight, I wish you Valley start-ups. He began it with $5500 would visit all the other bookstores and borrowed from his sister, the equivalent stands in the city and purchase a copy of some $140,000 today, which he in of every book and pamphlet relating to turn used to establish credit in New York. ot many California institutions this territory that is not already on your When he opened his doors on December Nhave celebrated their Sesquicenten- shelves.’ With characteristic prompt deci- 1, 1856, in a storefront “in the building of nial. Bancroft joins that small number sion he had instantly decided to form a Naglee, the brandymaker . where ten this year. The tale of its origins has been complete Pacific Coast Library.” (“Ban- years before a . sandbank was washed told variously. Hubert Howe Bancroft croft’s Exhaustive Work Described by by the tide-waters of the bay,” he had a himself puts it thusly in his autobiogra- Collaborator,” Los Angeles Times, March stock of books and stationery valued at phy, Literary Industries (1890): “In 1859 10, 1918.) $10,000. Today Tommy Toy’s restaurant William H. Knight, then in my service Was the date 1859 or 1862? Bancroft is located there, at the corner of Mont- as editor and compiler of statistical was writing thirty years after the event; gomery and Merchant Streets, across the works relative to the Pacific coast, was Knight, at least 46 years afterwards. We street from the Transamerica Pyramid and engaged in preparing the Hand-Book can rule both dates out, however; the one block from Portsmouth Square, at the Almanac for the year 1860. From time June 1961 issue of Bancroftiana noted time San Francisco’s commercial center. to time he asked of me certain books that Knight did not enter Bancroft’s During the first months Bancroft slept on required for the work. It occurred to me employ until August or September of a cot under the counter. A year later he that we should probably have frequent 1860, and “by December, Knight was could afford to rent the whole three-story occasion to refer to books on California, writing his mother that `The Hand Book building, forty by sixty feet. Oregon, Washington, and Utah, and of travel which I am compiling and of This spring’s exhibition, Bancroft that it might be more convenient to have which I wrote you is a great undertak- to the Core: The Bancroft Library at 150, them all together. Accordingly I ing.’” There is nothing like contemporary examines Bancroft’s collections and requested Mr Knight to clear the shelves evidence! collections 150 years later (see Theresa around his desk, and to them I trans- Salazar’s article, page 1). The exhibi- ferred every book I could find in my tion was accompanied by The Bancroft stock having reference to this country. I Library at 150: A Sesquicentennial Sympo- succeeded in getting together some fifty sium, held in the Maud Fife Room (315 or seventy-five volumes. This was the ori- Wheeler Hall) on March 5th and 6th. A gin of my library, sometimes called the group of distinguished junior and senior Pacific Library, but latterly the Bancroft scholars showed us how they use Bancroft Library” (pp. 173-74). today and how contemporary interpreta- Knight remembers it rather differ- tions of the history of California and the ently, however: “Mr. Bancroft went East West have changed so dramatically since in 1862 and on his return a few months Bancroft’s day. later I accompanied him through the The symposium began Friday after- store occupying two deep floors on noon with a session on colonial Mexico Montgomery and Merchant Streets. in the eighteenth century. The second He stopped at an alcove near my desk, Friday session took up California trade containing about 100 volumes of various before the Gold Rush and the relations sizes, old and new, and not presenting between Native Americans and other a very artistic appearance. He asked groups. The day ended with the open- what they were. I told him that they all ing reception for the Bancroft to the Core pertained to the geography, history and exhibition in the Bancroft Gallery. mining of the region embraced in our Hubert Howe Bancroft, age 20, 1852. Saturday morning began with the map [a general map of the Pacific Coast]. symposium’s keynote talk, “California and He gave a cursory glance at some of the At the time Bancroft was all of 28 the Borderlands: A Multiethnic Place that books, said nothing, and we passed on years old, a young entrepreneur on the Lives Quietly in the Archives,” by UCSC through the establishment. Returning, make, and H. H. Bancroft and Co. Professor of History Lisbeth Haas, a fre- Page 2 / Spring 2010 Newsletter of The Friends of The Bancroft Library Bancroft to the Core, continued from page 1 many high points from Bancroft’s ini- collecting, this exhibit seeks to show tial acquisition, along with other stel- the what and the how of Bancroft’s lar items that illustrate how that vision original library. It not only documents has continued to make The Bancroft Bancroft’s own book-buying and re- Library’s Western and Latin Ameri- search trips but also casts light on the cana Collections vital research materi- roles his numerous assistants played. als for local and international scholars, For gathering information about Span- students, and the general public. ish and Mexican California as well Theresa Salazar, Curator as documenting the unique stories of Bancroft Collection of Western Americana early Californians, Bancroft relied on Dylan Esson men like Thomas Savage and Enrique Graduate Research Assistant Cerruti, who traversed the Golden State copying and collecting Spanish- language documents and recording the stories of native Californios, such as Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, and American pioneers and settlers like John Sutter and John Bidwell. Bancroft’s second wife Matilda even quent researcher in Bancroft and the au- participated in recording the stories of thor of a prize-winning study, Conquests Mormon women, Colorado miners, and Historical Identities in California, and others. Matilda also accompanied 1769-1936, as well as numerous articles her husband to Mexico to conduct on varied aspects of California his- research. Bancroft benefited, as well, tory. The first full session on Saturday from the research trips of Alphonse took a look at Hubert Howe Bancroft Pinart, a French linguist who traveled as historian and the historiography of to Russia, the Pacific islands, Alaska, the American West since his Works. New Mexico, and Arizona in search of The last two sessions were devoted to information on indigenous languages. Archives Exhibition in the the Borderlands in the nineteenth and Pinart was also essential to Bancroft’s Rowell Cases accompanies twentieth centuries, that region of the collecting enterprise related to Mexico southwest United States and northern and Central America.