Sep 27, 2018 - Sale 2486

Sale 2486 - Lot 241

Price Realized: $ 2,375
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CALIFORNIA.) Substantial archive of Blackmar family papers including 40 letters from California. Approximately 200 items (0.4 linear feet) in one box; condition generally strong. Vp, 1860-98 (bulk 1874-82)

Additional Details

These letters are addressed to Sarah Isabella "Sade" Blackmar (born circa 1858) of West Springfield, PA. Several of her close relatives relocated to California. The collection includes 17 letters from her brother Frank Wilson Blackmar (1854-1931), who went west to study at the University of the Pacific in 1874, and went on to become a prominent sociologist. They were written from 1874 to 1882. His 28 August 1875 letter offers a long description of Chinese laundrymen in Santa Clara. On 24 August 1877, he wrote a letter from Fresno describing an epic four-week mountain trip with a friend. They met a Chinese man living deep in the woods: "He was rather old and insisted that his name was Young John. He was very slow and a great talker. He was very much afraid of bears, and so cut the bark of trees around the camp and wrote something on them to keep the bears away. It was a sort of prayer." His later letters were written as a teacher in San Jose and nearby Alamo. Also included are 12 letters from sister Ellen Blackmar (1852-1938), mostly from Concord, Contra Costa County, 1877-79 and undated--she later became an author under her married name Maxwell; 5 from her brother John Quincy Blackmar (1848-1893), a farmer in Clayton, Contra Costa County, 1880-82; and 6 from other Californians.
The bulk of the collection consists of letters to Sade Blackmar from friends and family in Pennsylvania; they remain unsorted. Also included are 2 unidentified cartes-de-visite and also a manuscript farm diary by an unidentified relative, 47 pages on loose folio sheets, 1865-67.