Collection

Cleveland Rockwell papers

• 1862-1907 (Creation)

0.45 cubic feet (1 letter document case)

This collection consists primarily of pencil and watercolor sketches and drawings made by artist and cartographer Cleveland Rockwell from 1862 to circa 1905. The materials include eight bound sketchbooks, as well as loose sketches, many of which have handwritten page numbers that suggest they were once part of bound volumes. Rockwell's sketches predominantly depict landscapes, particularly coastal and mountain scenes, in Oregon, Washington, California, and Alaska, as well as British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. Of particular note is a panorama of Lassen's Butte from Big Meadows at Prattville (folder 3), and sketches of British Columbia and California in volume 7. In addition to landscape scenes, the collection features a significant number of sketches depicting Pacific Northwest and California wildflowers, some of which were drawn by Cornelia F. Rockwell, Cleveland Rockwell's wife. The sketches also include ships and boats, as well as portraits of unidentified people. Many sketches throughout the collection have handwritten notes about light and color in the scenes depicted.

In addition to artwork, the collection includes a small quantity of family and biographical materials. The family materials are a photograph of Cleveland Rockwell and Cornelia F. Rockwell's two daughters, circa 1898, and an original 1949 letter from their younger daughter, Cornelia Rockwell Kearney, to "Eleanor," probably Eleanor Graves, who donated many of the materials in this collection to the Oregon Historical Society Research Library. The letter discusses Cleveland Rockwell's life and career, his artistic process, and outings that he and Cornelia F. Rockwell took to sketch wildflowers. Other materials include handwritten notes, made circa 1965, with biographical information about Cleveland Rockwell and his family, including information from 1863 and 1864 U.S. Coast Survey reports, and from obituaries for Rockwell in the Oregonian newspaper on March 22 and March 23, 1907.

Materials in this collection are in the public domain. http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/

https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv14722

Biographical note: Cleveland Salter Rockwell was born in 1837 in Youngstown, Ohio, the son of a lawyer who was involved with the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad. After the death of Rockwell's mother, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Rockwell attended secondary school in Troy, New York, and later became a student at New York University. In 1856, he was appointed to the U.S. Coast Survey, and was then assigned to survey a section of the New York harbor. From 1858 to 1861, his primary work was surveying the South Carolina and Georgia coasts in the area from St. Helena Sound, South Carolina to Savannah, Georgia. During the Civil War, the Coast Survey's activities supported the operations of the Union Army. Rockwell, who was commissioned as a captain of engineers in December 1863, performed additional work in South Carolina and Georgia, as well as surveys in Virginia; North Carolina; Maine; the area of Philadelphia, Pennysylvania; the area of Knoxville, Tennessee; and New York.
After the war, he worked with other U.S. engineers in Colombia, in response to a request from Colombia's president for aid from the Coast Survey, and subsequently worked on surveys in Maine and Georgia.

In 1867, Rockwell was promoted to the post of assistant in the Coast Survey and transferred to San Francisco, California. He surveyed the area around San Francisco and then went north in 1868 to survey the entrance to the Columbia River. For a period of years, he alternated between work in California and in the Pacific Northwest. In 1869, Rockwell married Cornelia Fleming Russell (1856-1922), who was born in Tennessee. In the late 1870s, the Rockwells moved from San Francisco to Albina, Oregon (later part of Portland). Cleveland Rockwell subsequently worked in various parts of Oregon, surveyed the Willamette River, and traveled to Alaska and British Columbia. In the early 1880s, Cleveland and Cornelia Rockwell had two daughters, their only children who lived to adulthood: Gertrude Ellinor Rockwell (later Mullay, 1881-1936), and Cornelia Rockwell (later Cornelia Stephens, then Cornelia Rockwell Kearney, 1882-1949). In the late 1880s, Cleveland Rockwell conducted a survey of a section of the Oregon coast, and after additional work in California and on the Columbia River, he retired to Portland in 1892. Also in that year, the Rockwell family took a vacation trip, visiting the Puget Sound region in Washington state, British Columbia, and Alaska.

Throughout Rockwell's years with the Coast Survey and after, he sketched and painted, and his work was exhibited in San Francisco, California and in Portland, Oregon. He was an organizer of the Portland Art Club in 1885, and served as president of the Oregon Art Association in 1896. Cornelia F. Rockwell also made art, and accompanied Cleveland Rockwell on field outings in which they made sketches and watercolors of wildflowers in the Pacific Northwest and California. Toward the end of Rockwell's life, he worked as a civil engineer, was active in local banking and in Republican party politics, and contributed articles to Pacific Monthly and West Shore. His drawings were used in the decoration of the battleship Oregon's silver punch set in 1897. Rockwell died in Portland in 1907.

• Citation: Cleveland Rockwell papers, Mss 2163, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.

"Cleveland Rockwell: scientist and artist, 1837-1907," by Franz Stenzel (Portland, Or.: Oregon Historical Society, 1972); collection materials; vital records on Ancestry.com; articles in the Oregonian, 1879-1922.

• Northwest, Pacific -- 19th century -- Pictorial works
• Artists--Oregon
• drawings (visual works)

• Rockwell, Cleveland, 1837-1907 (Subject)
• Rockwell, Cornelia F. (Cornelia Fleming), 1856-1922 (Subject)