Uncategorized
44419.
44420.
44421.
44422.
44423.
44424.
44425.
44426.
44427.
44428.
44429.
44430.
861. Section of the Original Big Tree-30 feet diameter.
44431.
861. Section of the Original Big Tree-30 feet diameter.
44432.
863. Section of the Original Big Tree-and house on the stump.
44433.
864. Section of the Original Big Tree-and celebrated horse “Selem.”
44434.
865. The Pioneers’ Cabin-32 feet diameter. Photographer Charles Lyman Pond, second from left.
44435.
866. One of the Sentinels-and house over the stump.
44437.
867. Broderick and California.
44438.
869. George Washington-234 feet high.
44439.
869. George Washington-234 feet high.
44440.
870. Prof. James D. Dana.
44441.
873. Fallen Tree Hercules-325 feet long.
44442.
874. Mammoth Grove Hotel, Calaveras County.
44443.
874. Mammoth Grove Hotel, Calaveras County.
44444.
874. Mammoth Grove Hotel, Calaveras County.
44445.
875. The Sentinels; 315 feet high, 23 feet diameter; Mammoth Grove, Calaveras County.
44446.
876. The Sentinels; 315 feet high; near view. Section of the Big Tree, and house over the stump.
44447.
877. Section of the Big Tree, 30 feet in diameter, and House over the Stump, from the Sentinels.
44449.
878. Section of the Original Big Tree, Diameter 300 feet; Calaveras County.
44450.
879. But-end section of the Big Tree, showing the auger-holes made in felling.
44451.
880. House over the Stump of the Original Big Tree, diameter 32 feet, Mammoth Grove, Calaveras County.
44452.
880. Stump of the Original Big Tree, 32 ft. diameter.
44453.
881. The Sentinels, and House over the Big Tree Stump, from the Mammoth Grove Hotel.
44454.
882. Big Tree Hercules, from a point 250 feet from the base, Calaveras County.
44455.
882. Fallen Tree Hercules, 325 ft. long, 97 ft. circumference; from a point 250 ft. from base, Calaveras Co.
44456.
883. The Three Graces, 272 feet high, Circumference 32 feet, Mammoth Grove, Calaveras County.
44457.
883. The Three Graces, 272 feet high, circumference 32 ft.; Mammoth Grove, Calaveras County.
44458.
885. Big Tree Wm. Cullen Bryant, 305 ft. high, and 45 ft. in circumference; near view; Calaveras County.
44459.
886. Pioneer’s Cabin; near view; diameter 32 feet. Mammoth Grove, Calaveras County.
44460.
887. Big Tree Abraham Lincoln; height 281 feet; circumference 44 feet. The man standing to the right of the tree is Hubert Howe Bancroft (May 5, 1832 – March 2, 1918). Bancroft was an American historian and ethnologist who wrote, published and collected works concerning the western United States, Texas, California, Alaska, Mexico, Central America and British Columbia. He was born on May 5, 1832, in Granville, Ohio, to Azariah Ashley Bancroft and Lucy Howe Bancroft. The Howe and Bancroft families originally hailed from the New England states of Vermont and Massachusetts, respectively. Bancroft’s parents were staunch abolitionists and the family home was a station on the Underground Railroad. Bancroft attended the Doane Academy in Granville for a year, and he then became a clerk in his brother-in-law’s bookstore in Buffalo, New York. 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. Bancroft was successful in building his company, entering the world of publishing in the process. He also became a serious collector of books, building a collection numbering into the tens of thousands of volumes. 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. 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 the 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. 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 writers and wrote some of the material himself, though he credited only himself as an author. 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. Bancroft’s first marriage was to Emily Ketchum in 1859. They had one child, a girl who was born in 1859, named Kate. Emily died in childbirth in 1869. Bancroft married again in 1879. His second wife was Matilda Coley Griffing, with whom he had four children. Although he never graduated from college, in 1875 Bancroft was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Yale in recognition of his massive historical work on Native Races of the Pacific States. He was also elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1875. He died on March 2, 1918, at his country home in Walnut Creek, California. “Acute peritonitis” was blamed as the cause of death in published newspaper reports. Bancroft was 85 at his death. His body was interred in the Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California. In the late 19th century, it was determined that much of the work of which Bancroft claimed authorship had in fact been written by others. This tainted his legacy in the eyes of some scholars, on the principle “false in one thing, false in all.” The Salt Lake Tribune called him a “purloiner of other peoples’ brains” in 1893. The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, reflects the collector’s name. The University of California purchased his 60,000-volume book collection in 1905. Bancroft Way in Berkeley, California, was named in his honor. In 1885 Bancroft purchased a ranch with an adobe cottage located in Spring Valley, in San Diego County, as a retirement home. The Hubert H. Bancroft Ranch House is now a National Historic Landmark. In addition, part of a property Bancroft bought around 1880 in Contra Costa County, California later became the Ruth Bancroft Garden, when three acres of the remaining farm land was given by Bancroft’s grandson Philip to his wife, Ruth Bancroft. Several schools are named for Bancroft, including Bancroft Middle School (Long Beach, California), Bancroft Middle School (Los Angeles, California), Hubert H. Bancroft Elementary School in Sacramento, Bancroft Middle School in San Leandro, California Bancroft Elementary School in Andover, Massachusetts, Bancroft Elementary School in Walnut Creek, California and Bancroft Community School in Spring Valley, California. Several streets are named in his honor including Bancroft Way in Berkeley, Bancroft Avenue in Oakland and San Leandro. An archive of Bancroft family correspondence, collected by his daughter Kate, is held in Special Collections and Archives at the Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego. Recollections of Hubert Howe Bancroft and the Bancroft Family, an oral history interview with Margaret Wood Bancroft, widow of Bancroft’s son Griffing, is held in the Regional Oral History Office of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
44461.
887. Big Tree Abraham Lincoln; height 281 feet; circumference 44 feet. Hubert H. Bancroft at left.
44462.
888. Mother of the Forest; 305 feet high; 63 feet circumference; bark off 121 feet. Photographers Charles Lyman Pond and John Calvin Scripture, 6th and 7th from left.
44463.
888. Mother of the Forest; 305 feet high; 63 feet circumference; bark off 121 feet.
44464.
888. Mother of the Forest; 305 feet high; 63 feet circumference; bark off 121 feet.
44465.
889. Father of the Forest; 112 feet circumference, Mammoth Grove. Hubert H. Bancroft on ladder.
44466.
889. Father of the Forest; 112 feet circumference, Mammoth Grove.
44467.
890. Fallen Tree, Father of the Forest, 112 feet circumference; and Jas. King of Wm., Mammoth Grove.
44468.
890. Fallen Tree, Father of the Forest, 112 feet circumference; and Jas. King of Wm., Mammoth Grove. Hubert H. Bancroft is the man seated on the log; his librarian H.L. Oak is the man on the ground in rear. Scripture’s photo wagon can be seen in the right rear.
44469.
890. Father of the Forest, 112 feet circumference, and Jas. King of Wm., Mammoth Grove, Calaveras Co.