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Malaspina expedition papers

  • Mss 2814
  • Collection
  • 1789-1795

Documents relating to the voyage of scientific exploration, 1789-1794, conducted by the Italian mariner Alessandro (Alejandro) Malaspina, assisted by José Bustamente y Guerra, and sponsored by the Spanish crown. The expedition included stops in Trinidad, Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, points along the coast of North America as far north as Nootka Sound, the Philippine Islands, Australia, and New Zealand. The documents relate to the American portion of the voyage as far as California and include documentation on inland explorations and the gathering of scientific data, including descriptions of conditions among the California missions. Also included are a group of items relating to preparations and supplies. Many documents were sent to or from the office of Spanish naval minister Antonio Valdés y Bazán. Some documents are contemporary copies.

Watercolor sketch of the ship Lausanne, 1839

  • Mss 5285
  • Collection
  • 1838

Watercolor sketch of the ship Lausanne painted by missionary Hamilton Campbell during his journey by ship from New York to Oregon in 1839. The collection also includes a typescript document signed by Ben Campbell Holladay explaining the provenance of the painting.

Campbell, Hamilton, 1812-1863

Jason Lee papers

  • Mss 1212
  • Collection
  • 1834-1845

Collection consists of the personal and professional papers of Reverend Jason Lee. The papers date from 1834 to 1845. Included are Lee’s diary of his overland journey to Oregon and the construction of his mission with entries dating from 1834 to 1838; an 1844 report Lee made to the Methodist Missionary Board; miscellaneous papers related to the illness and death of Lee in 1845; and fragments of an undated biography of Jason Lee likely written by Harvey Kimball Hines. The collection also contains a folder of Anna Maria Pittman Lee's correspondence dated from 1834 to 1835.

Jason Lee was born on June 28, 1803, in Stanstead, Quebec. After his ordination in 1834, Lee and his nephew, Daniel Lee, journeyed overland to Oregon with the intention to establish a mission to minister to the Flathead Indians. He instead established his mission in the Willamette Valley near present-Day Salem, Oregon, in territory that was home to bands of the Kalapuyan people. Lee returned east in 1838 to justify his decision and recruit reinforcements for the Willamette mission, as well as missions at The Dalles and Clatsop plains. In 1840, The Great Reinforcement, a group of 51 men, women, and children, arrived in Oregon on the ship Lausanne in response to Lee’s promotion in the East. In 1843, Jason Lee participated in the founding of Oregon's provisional government and Willamette University. Lee was relieved of his missionary post in 1844. Lee married Anna Maria Pittman, who died in 1838, and then Lucy Lee who died in 1842. Jason Lee died on March 12, 1845.

Lee, Jason, 1803-1845

Revenue cutter Joe Lane plans

  • Mss 4037
  • Collection
  • 1851?

One blackline photocopy sheet of plans for the revenue cutter Joe Lane, built in Baltimore, Maryland, 1851. Includes cross section, top view, midship section, sail plan, and table of principal dimensions.

Columbia Rediviva collection

  • Mss 957
  • Collection
  • 1785-1852

The collection consists of correspondence, journals, ship logs, administrative records, and ink sketches relating to the ship Columbia Rediviva. A mix of original materials and reproductions are present. Among the originals are: the journal of John Hoskins, written during the Columbia's journey around the world in 1791-1792; the journal of George Barrell, 1806, written on board the brig Venus from Boston to Malaga, and on the schooner Louisiana from Malaga to New York; Barrell's account of stores on board the Columbia, 1792-1793; letters of Joseph Barrell to Samuel Webb, 1785-1801, and to John Hoskins, 1790; letters from Colburn Barrell and Robert Haswell, 1801; owner's accounts, 1787-1793; accounts of the Columbia and Lady Washington, 1787-1790; receipts; and four ink sketches by George Davidson depicting incidents in the voyages of the Columbia.

The reproductions held in this collection include the journals of Robert Haswell and Owen Smith, 1787-1789; and a file of receipts and other papers concerning outfitting of the Columbia, 1790 (on microfilm). Also included are publications of Robert Gray's wife Martha's petition to congress for a pension and memorial, 1848-1852.

Monteith family photograph collection, 1847-1854

  • Org. Lot 1388
  • Collection
  • 1847 - 1854

This collection is comprised of two (2) daguerreotypes showing portraits of brothers Thomas and Walter Monteith, who founded the town of Albany, Oregon, circa 1849. They traveled to Oregon from New York in 1847 and settled adjacent land claims, sharing a house which straddled the two claims.

Lorenzo Lorain letters, 1855-1968

  • Mss 417
  • Collection
  • 1855-1968

Collection consists of twenty-one autographed letters written by Lorenzo Lorain between 1855 and 1861. The letters contain descriptions of Lorain's military service, including yellow fever epidemics, the forced removal of Native peoples from the western region of the Oregon Territory to the Coast Reservation, and his photography. The letters are addressed from West Point Academy, Aspinwall, Fort Dalles, San Francisco, Fort Walla Walla, Fort Umpqua, and Camp Day near the Klamath Basin. The correspondents include Lorain's father, Dr. Henry Tilden Lorain, and his sisters, Mary Jane Ashman and Martha (Merty) Eliza Lorain. Also included in the collection are biographical research notes and correspondence concerning Lorenzo Lorain and Edward Perry Vollum, collected by Nancy A. Hacker between 1958 and 1968.

Digitized materials available online in OHS Digital Collections consists of the original correspondence written by Lorain between 1855 and 1861 in folder 1 of Mss 417.

Undigitized materials available for use at the Oregon Historical Society research library include research notes and correspondence collected by Nancy A. Hacker between 1958 and 1968 in folder 2 of Mss 417.

Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory photograph

  • Org. Lot 1030
  • Collection
  • 1859

This collection consists of one photograph of Fort Walla Walla, taken May 1, 1859. The photograph was originally owned and may have been taken by Frederick Tracy Dent. This photograph depicts the fort's fourth location, which was constructed between 1857 to 1858, and shows several of the fort's buildings.

Dent, Frederick T. (Frederick Tracy), 1820-1892

Oregon Constitutional Convention records, 1857-1859

  • Mss 1227
  • Collection
  • 1857 - 1859

Documents created during the Oregon Constitutional Convention of 1857. Includes: committee reports, drafts of articles and schedules, general notes, corrections, and other materials. Sections of the constitution represented include: preamble and bill of rights; suffrage and elections; distribution of powers; Legislative Department; Executive Department; education and school lands; finance; militia; corporations and internal improvements; seat of government; general provisions; boundaries; schedules, and related papers. Also includes printed speech of James Hughes of Indiana, on the admission of Oregon, delivered in the House of Representatives, 1859 February 10.

Oregon. Constitutional Convention (1857)

Lorenzo Lorain photographs

  • Org. Lot 1416
  • Collection
  • 1857-1860

Collection consists of salt paper photographic prints attributed to Lorenzo Lorain. The photographs depict scenes around Fort Umpqua and Camp Day during the forced removal of Native peoples from the western region of the Oregon Territory onto the Coast Reservation between 1857 and 1861. The photographs of Fort Umpqua, in Douglas County, Oregon, include the block house, barracks, and support buildings as well as portraits of soldiers and their families. Also included are exterior photographs of plank houses and portraits of unidentified Native American people who were likely members of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, Siuslaw, or Siletz peoples housed near Fort Umpqua on the southern portion of the Coast Reservation. The collection also includes photographs taken by Lorain at Camp Day, a temporary military encampment established in the Klamath Basin in Southern Oregon during the summer and fall of 1860. These photographs depict the camp site, the troops stationed at the camp, and a group photograph of unidentified members of the Klamath and Modoc people at or near the camp. The collection also includes photographs of Portland, Oregon City, and The Dalles, Oregon, which are believed to have been taken by Lorain during his travel from Fort Walla Walla to Fort Umpqua in 1857.

Also included in the collection are two salt paper prints depicting Fort Crook in Shasta County, California, which are attributed to Dr. Edward Perry Vollum. Vollum was stationed at Fort Umpqua during a portion of Lorain’s assignment at the fort.

Abraham Lincoln letters

  • Mss 324
  • Collection
  • 1858-1861

One autograph letter, A.L.S., from Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Ill. to Simeon Francis in Oregon, 1860 Aug. 4, discussing the upcoming presidential election and prospects for the winning of various states. Collection also includes photostatic copies of three additional letters: Lincoln to James Thornton, 1858 Dec. 2; Simeon Francis to Lincoln, 1859 Dec. 26; and David Logan to Lincoln, 1861 Sept. 5.

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

Camp Watson, Oregon sketch, 1865

  • Mss 5279
  • Collection
  • 1865

A single pencil sketch of Camp Watson, Oregon dated to 1865. The First Regiment Oregon volunteer Cavalry maintained Camp Watson from 1864 to 1869 during the conflict with members of the Bannock, Shoshoni, and Paiute peoples known as the Snake War.

Oregon Imprints collection

  • Coll 400
  • Collection
  • 1846-1870 (bulk)

This collection, assembled by the Oregon Historical Society Research Library, primarily consists of printed material that was either produced in or closely relates to the Oregon Territory and to Oregon's early statehood. Almost all of these items were listed in George Belknap's 1968 bibliography, "Oregon Imprints, 1845-1870."

The materials in this collection include legal and judicial documents such as legislative bills, reports, and proceedings; records of associations, including masonic organizations, temperance organizations, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and religious organizations; announcements and proclamations; event invitations, announcements, and programs, including for Fourth of July celebrations and the Oregon State Fair; advertisements; newspaper pages; and almanacs. The collection also includes some materials relating to conflicts between Euro-Americans and Native peoples, such as the Rogue River War of 1855-1856.

With some exceptions, materials are listed in this collection guide in numerical order based on numbers Belknap assigned to each item in his bibliography. Not all items that appear in Belknap's bibliography are included in this collection, and so some item numbers are skipped. Item numbers are typically handwritten on the documents themselves or on enclosing envelopes; sometimes these also show an earlier number that Douglas C. McMurtrie had assigned. The collection also includes a handful of items that were not cataloged by Belknap, but which also date from the mid-19th century.

Other materials in the collection include copies of Belknap's "Oregon Imprints, 1845-1870," supplements to "Oregon Imprints, 1847-1870" and to "Oregon Imprints, 1845-1870," and Belknap's correspondence and writings relating to early Oregon imprints.

William Russell Parnell photographs

  • Org. Lot 533
  • Collection
  • 1864-1871

This collection consists of five photographs that were originally owned and may have been taken by William Russell Parnell during his service in the United States Army, with materials ranging between 1864-1871. Photographs depict Camp Harney, Camp Warner and Fort Boise, bases where Parnell was stationed, and also Camp Barry near Washington D.C. Parnell's relationship to Camp Barry is unknown, but he was stationed in various locations in that area during the Civil War. Of the five photographs included in the collection, four have Parnell’s signature.

Parnell, William Russell, 1836-1910

Early Oregon census and tax records, 1842-1880

  • Mss 1
  • Collection
  • 1842-1880

This collection consists of early census and tax records from the Oregon provisional and territorial governments and early Oregon statehood. The materials in this collection were gathered from early, mostly pre-1958, Oregon Historical Society Research Library accessions of census and tax related records. The early census and tax records document demographic and economic data for what are now portions of Oregon and California. Original census records include Elijah White's 1842 census; a census (1849) of males over the age of 21; Jackson County census rolls (ca. 1854-1855, 1858); a Washington County census (1856); a Washington County tax roll (1852); and an agricultural census for Clackamas County (1870). Typescript and photostat reproductions of census records include Joseph Meek's Census of Oregon (1845); Charles Wells’ Benton County census (1854); the United States Census roll for Coos County (1860); and a partial typescript of the 1880 United States Census for Wasco County. The collection also includes reports of the 1850 census for Butte and Calaveras counties in California.

Carleton E. Watkins photographs, 1861-1885

  • Org. Lot 93
  • Collection
  • 1861 - 1885

This collection contains stereographs, cartes de visite, cabinet and boudoir cards, photograph albums, mammoth plates, and other loose prints taken by landscape photographer Carleton E. Watkins, 1861-1885. Watkins photographs that were taken before he lost his Yosemite Art Gallery studio in 1876 to Isaiah W. Taber are known as his "Old Series." Watkins photographs taken after 1876 are referred to as his "New Series." The collection contains both Old Series and New Series images and includes some of Watkins' photographs printed under Taber's imprint..

The bulk of the stereographs and mammoth plate photographs in this collection were taken during Watkins' trips to Oregon to photograph Portland, the Willamette River, and the Columbia River in 1867 (Old Series), as well as in 1882, 1883, and the winter of 1884-1885 (New Series). There are also some stereographs that were taken by Watkins on his 1882 voyage to photograph Puget Sound in the Washington Territory and Victoria in British Columbia. Other mammoth plates, cartes de visite, and stereographs depict views of places in California, including Yosemite and Mariposa County, the Farallon Islands and other scenes of the California coast, San Francisco, Round Top, Mount Lola, and Mount Shasta, as well as views of Utah taken for the Union Pacific Railroad. There are also cabinet card portraits taken by Watkins of various people, including Oregon railroad financier Simeon Gannett Reed and members of the family of Cornelius C. Beekman (1828-1915), banker from Jacksonville, Or.

The collection also contains two photograph albums assembled by Watkins and originally owned by Charles H. Prescott (b. 1839), manager of the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Co. from 1881-1887. One album, "Sun Sketches of Columbia River Scenery," contains images taken by Watkins during his trips to the Columbia River Gorge circa 1882-1883, and the second album, ""Great Storm of the Winter of 1884-5. Columbia River, Or.," contains images that he took during a winter blizzard in December and January of 1884-1885 that snowed in an Oregon Railway and Navigation Co. train on its tracks along the Columbia River. The collection also contains one group of stereographs entitled "Watkins' Pacific Railroad" that were originally taken by Alfred A. Hart, official photographer for the Central Pacific Railroad, between 1862-1869 and reprinted by Watkins under his own imprint after 1870.

Watkins, Carleton E., 1829-1916

Coronation of Womanhood posters

  • Coll 839
  • Collection
  • 1884-1885

The collection consists of two copies of a poster entitled “Coronation of Womanhood” and a single copy of an identification key to the people depicted in the poster. The posters are printed from a photo crayon lithograph engraving. At the front center of the image, the goddess of Liberty is crowning a kneeling female figure representing womanhood. Below them is a banner reading, “Coronation of Womanhood.” Arranged in a half-circle above Liberty and Womanhood at the top of the poster are the portraits of Edward Dickinson Baker, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and James A. Garfield. Flanking either side of the image is a dais draped in bunting featuring the state crests of New York, California, Oregon, Nebraska, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia. Seated at the dais are 17 women of the suffrage movement: Martha C. Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Frances Wright, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Susan B. Anthony, Abigail Scott Duniway, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Helen M. Gouger, Sarah L. Knox Goodrich, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, Mary J. Collins, Julia Ward Howe, Lillie Devereux Black, Matilda Jocelyn Gage, and Ernestine L. Rose. Below the dais, there is an audience of 275 additional men recognized as supporters of women’s enfranchisement. The men depicted in the scene include Matthew Deady, Stephen F. Chadwick, Rockey Preston Earhart, Joseph N. Dolph, Melvin Clark George, Samuel Royal Thurston, and William S. Ladd. A full listing of the depicted individuals is accessible via the identification key. The inscription at the bottom of the poster reads, “Respectfully dedicated to the loyal subjects of liberty who paved the way to woman’s enfranchisement in the Pacific Northwest, United States of America, anno domini one thousand eight hundred eighty three.”

Source: The Idaho Semi-Weekly World. February 20, 1885.

Duniway, Abigail Scott, 1834-1915

Mount Tabor Villa broadside

  • Coll 101
  • Collection
  • 1889

Advertising broadside for the Mount Tabor Villa subdivision of Portland, Oregon, sold by the Hart-Royal Company, including a colored plat map. Mount Tabor Villa is today part of the Montavilla neighborhood.

A. Anderson & Co. Lithography (Portland, Or.)

1890 Portland flood and street scene photographs

  • Org. Lot 1423
  • Collection
  • 1890

Collection consists of 18 photographs of Portland, Oregon, taken circa 1890. The photographs are primarily scenes of flooded streets in downtown and inner East Portland during the 1890 flood. Other subjects depicted in the photographs include cable cars, the bark Coloma, Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, the Riverside Hotel, the Morrison Bridge, and other unflooded street scenes from Portland. The photographs are mounted on 9 loose album pages and include handwritten image captions. The photographer or photographers for these items is unknown.

Isaac Hodgson, Jr. architectural illustrations

  • Mss 3055
  • Collection
  • 1891

The collection consists of two lithograph illustrations and two watercolor illustrations of buildings in Portland, Oregon, designed by architect Isaac Hodgson, Jr. The watercolors depict the entrance and the tower for the Chamber of Commerce building, one lithograph depicts the Chamber of Commerce building between SW 3rd Avenue and SW 4th Avenue, and one lithograph depicts the entrance to a proposed United Bank building. The United Bank lithograph is from a drawing by W. E. Donovan, while all other works were drawn or painted by J. Anderson. Both lithographs were printed by the Heliotype Printing Company of Boston, Massachusetts, and appeared in the September 26, 1891 and August 27, 1892 issues of "American Architect and Building News."

Battleship Oregon plans

  • Mss 4062
  • Collection
  • 1893

Collection consists of 13 blueprint plans on 6 sheets of the battleship Oregon, built by the Union Iron Works, San Francisco, California, 1893, scale: 1/16" : 1' to 1" : 1'.

Tabor family photographs

  • Org. Lot 968
  • Collection
  • 1885 - 1895

Collection consists of photographs collected by the Tabor family. Most of the photographs are believed to have been taken or acquired by J. W. Tabor and Margaret Tabor during a trip to Portland, Oregon in 1895. Subjects include various views of Portland, including City Park (now Washington Park) gardens and bear pit, Mount Tabor reservoir, the Portland Heights cable car line, the Willamette River waterfront, and the Morrison Bridge; Celilo Falls; photographs of James Waucop Tabor, Margaret S. McNulty Tabor and her cousin, Alice Bachman Bettner; and a coroner's investigation of a body found in a mining camp near Granite, Oregon. None of the photographers are identified.

Catholic Ladders collection

  • Coll 51
  • Collection
  • 1840-1896

Collection consists of hand-drawn and commercially printed Catholic ladders designed by Francis Norbert Blanchet between 1840 and 1859. The hand-drawn 1840 ladder is believed to have been drawn by Blanchet. The ladder matches extant examples of Blanchet’s handwriting and is addressed to his brother A. M. A. Blanchet at Cedars parish in Canada. Also included in the collection are three printed lithograph ladders with instructions written in French (1846-47 ladder), Spanish (1856 ladder), and English (1859 ladder). There are also photostatic copies of two additional early examples of Blanchet ladders. The collection also includes one Pictorial Catechism printed in 1896 that was designed by Albert Lacombe based off Blanchet’s ladders.

Blanchet, Francis Norbert, 1795-1883

Alice E. Wilson sketchbook

  • Mss 5286
  • Collection
  • 1898 - 1899

Sketchbook, 1 vol., August 1898-August 1899, filled with charcoal sketches of houses and scenery on the Oregon Coast including: Garibaldi, Tillamook and Seaside.

Wilson, Alice E.

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