Research Guides: 15th Annual Los Angeles as Subject Archives Bazaar Virtual Exhibitor Booth: The Claremont Colleges Library, Special Collections

About

The Claremont Colleges Library Special Collections is the library’s principal repository for print and manuscript primary sources. The collections number nearly 200,000 volumes and more than 11,000 linear feet of a diverse array of literary and historical manuscripts, personal papers, and college archives that span more than 900 years of human history. The collections are available for research, teaching, and study in person, and, increasingly, digitally in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library.

We provide an array of research support and instruction services to the students, faculty, and staff of The Claremont Colleges and the wider scholarly community; we partner with faculty and our library colleagues on course-integrated instruction, and we provide students opportunities to engage with and utilize primary sources in their research.

List of relevant collections

David Boulé California Orange Collection
The David Boule California Orange Collection contains materials related to orange and citrus cultivation in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Developed by author, researcher, and avid collector David Boulé, this collection has long been a fixture of the LA Archives Bazaar. and contains valuable resources relating to the California citrus industry, including rare posters, pamphlets, candid photographs, labor documents, and a sizable collection of souvenirs and products promoted to tourists and consumers.
Charles and Edmund Boynton Papers
Brothers Charles Luther (1881-1967) and Edmund Cyrus Boynton (1879-1977) were born in Vermont. The Boynton family moved to Pasadena in 1887 and the brothers attended Pomona College, Edmund graduating in 1900 and Charles graduating in 1901. The Boynton papers include ephemera, scrapbooks, albums, photographs, diaries, correspondence and clippings from childhood, Pomona College days, and the time Charles spent in China as a missionary. See the Boynton Collection of Early Claremont in the CCDL.
Congregational Church Papers
The Congregational Church Papers brings together records from a number of Southern California Congregational Church organizations. The earliest records include those of the Congregational Ministerial Union of Los Angeles and vicinity, 1908-1934; Woman's Home Missionary Union of Southern California, 1888-1925; and Woman's Board of Missions for the Pacific, 1889-1914. The greatest portion of the collection is annual reports and miscellaneous items from member churches of the Congregational Conference of Southern California and the Southwest, 1952-1963. Papers from women's organizations account for more than a third of the collection.
Elisa Leonelli Photographs and Essays Collection
The collection contains 35mm photographic travel slides and international fashion magazine clippings by photo-journalist Elisa Leonelli. The slides cover a wide range of subjects and geographic locations, including extensive coverage of the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics. The fashion magazines are from a variety of countries, predominantly Italy, and include celebrity photographs and interviews.
Dr. Walter Lindley Scrapbooks
Through clippings, correspondence, and ephemeral materials, The Dr. Walter Lindley Scrapbooks document some of Dr. Lindley’s most notable endeavors. These include the formation and management of the California Hospital and nursing program, his candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles, the development of the Whittier State School, time served on the Los Angeles Public Library board, and the founding of a tuberculosis sanitarium in Idyllwild. See the Dr. Walter Lindley Scrapbook collection in the CCDL.
Jose Maria Maytorena Papers
The Jose Maria Maytorena Papers, documenting General Maytorena’s role in the 1910 revolution in Mexico, include correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other documents. The collection includes a manuscript account of his role as governor in Sonora during the revolution, as well as correspondence with notable revolutionary figures like Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Victoriano Huerta.
William McPherson Papers
The William McPherson collection documents the McPherson Family’s arrival in Orange County in the 1870s and their involvement in the grape and avocado industries. Half of the collection contains Spanish and English correspondence, as well as printed materials, photographs, and ephemera collected by McPherson related to his interests in the history and anthropology of Orange County between the 1770s and 1920s. The collection contains civil war diaries and letters, ship logbooks, scrapbooks, autograph letters, and documents related to United States, British, and California history dating from 1665 to 1932.
Howard Mills Collection
The Howard Mills Collection is composed of materials concerning the U.S. World War II Finance efforts, centering around Howard D. Mills’ activities, beginning in 1941 with Defense Bonds, continuing in December 1941–1945 with War Bonds, and 1945–1965 with Savings Bonds. Included are correspondence to and from Mr. Mills; plans for sales promotion, publicity, speeches, announcements, posters, progress reports, news releases, newspaper clippings, magazine advertisements, photographs; campaigns as conducted by industries, retail stores, schools, colleges, etc. Contact Special Collections for finding aid.
Marion Parks Papers
The papers of Marion Parks, a self-described "California historian," contain typescripts of her own writings as well as vintage pamphlets and brochures mostly from the 1930s, and correspondence files from the 1920s to the 1940s. The collection includes booklets published while she was a publicity writer for Security-First National Bank, and documents her organization of colorful, Spanish-style pageants in several California towns. The pageants are also captured in photographs taken by Parks, along with her photographs of parades and other events in and around Los Angeles during late 1920s and early 1930s.
T. Palmer and Lewis F. Reed Photographs of California and the West
The Reed Photographs include images of California and the West with photographs of Palm Springs, Yosemite, Owens Valley, the San Gabriel Mountains, Lake Tahoe, and Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks. The collection contains two photo albums and 220 loose photographs.
Rude-Frankenfield Papers
The Rude-Frankenfield Papers came from the family of Chester A. Rude, a former trustee of Claremont McKenna College. An extensive collection, The value of the material lies in its representation of the daily lives of at least six generations of the female side of the family, with correspondence, legal and personal papers, and ephemera dating back to the early 1800s. From the early 20th century onward, there is a strong Southern California connection through Jacob Frankenfield and his descendants.
San Gabriel Mission Matrimonial Investigation Records
The matrimonial investigation records, or "diligencias matrimoniales", are part of a collection of California materials gathered by William F. McPherson, an Orange County rancher, scholar and collector. Predominantly, though not exclusively, the records of Mission San Gabriel (as other California missions are also represented), these investigations of the period 1788-1861 consist of notarized interviews with couples requesting marriage in the Roman Catholic Church. There are 165 investigations in all, with 173 men and 170 women represented.
Edward Vischer Papers
Includes four published portfolios, The Mammoth Tree Grove (1862), The Washoe Mining Region (1862), Pictorial of California Landscape (1870), and Missions of Upper California (1872), along with an important file of original Vischer drawings and paintings; two scrapbooks of California scenes; numerous volumes of California scenes; and items about Vischer. Many items from this collection have been digitized and can be found in the "Edward Vischer Drawings, Photographs and Other Material" collection in the CCDL.
Jerry Voorhis Papers
The Jerry Voorhis papers document the life and legacy of Horace Jeremiah “Jerry” Voorhis, who served as a U.S. congressman from California's 12th district from 1936-1946, and founded the Voorhis School for Boys in San Dimas, California. Voorhis served on the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities and was president and later executive director of the Co-operative League of the U.S.A. The collection contains materials related to his political campaigns and years in Congress, research material for his books, and materials related to Voorhis family history. The collection also includes books and periodicals, phonograph records used in radio broadcasts, scrapbooks, photographs, articles and speeches by Voorhis, newspaper clippings, and other artifacts.
War Relocation Authority Records
The War Relocation Authority Records collection includes materials used by Carey McWilliams in writing the book, Prejudice: Japanese Americans, Symbol of Racial Intolerance, published in 1944. It includes confidential reports, bibliographies, clippings and compilations of articles, legal papers, correspondence between McWilliams and Japanese American evacuees, relocation camp newspapers and other publications. McWilliams was editor of The Nation for 20 years, worked as a labor lawyer in Los Angeles, and was appointed California Commissioner of Immigration and Housing in 1939. Before he died in 1980, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Claremont Graduate School.
Water Resources Collection
The Water Resources Collection was developed in the 1930s by then Librarian Willis Holmes Kerr and Claremont Colleges Trustee John Treanor when water issues of the period interested both men, and they began to collect materials on the subject of water, its distribution, augmentation, and use in Southern California. By traveling to the Hoover Dam, the Imperial Valley, into Arizona, and to the San Joaquin Valley, they assembled literally tons of records: reports of engineers, annual reports and minute books of boards of directors of water companies, documents of federal and state governments, promotional pamphlets, newspaper clippings, and a host of other materials.