by Angel Caranna | Apr 14, 2021 | Publications
On June 14, 1864, after a week’s journey amid miles of prickly pear and vast plains, Nathaniel P. Hill (1832-1900) sat down and wrote a letter to his wife. Hill was a former Brown University chemistry professor hoping to make his fortune smelting precious metals in...
by Angel Caranna | Apr 14, 2021 | Publications
On the great plains of the American West amidst the tension between settlers and decimated tribal communities, one remarkable family represented a range of perspectives on the Native American experience. Connected both to old stock from New England and tribal chiefs...
by Angel Caranna | Apr 14, 2021 | Publications
The American Dream is nebulous, conjuring up indistinct visions of wealth, opportunity, and freedom in its many forms: freedom from want, freedom from obligation, freedom to do as one chooses. When Mexico ceded California to the United States under the Treaty of...
by Angel Caranna | Apr 14, 2021 | Publications
The vast frontier of the American West has always been a fertile breeding ground for rumors, legends, myths, and tall tales. In particular, there has been no shortage of outrageous stories regarding interactions with America’s indigenous tribes that often strain the...
by Angel Caranna | Apr 14, 2021 | Publications
Elizabeth Benton Frémont, known as Lily, became an intrepid traveler from a young age. She was born in Washington, D.C., on November 15, 1842, just days after her father, the explorer John C. Frémont, had returned from his first expedition to the American West. ...
by Angel Caranna | Apr 14, 2021 | Publications
For nearly a century the Clements Library has been mounting exhibitions and issuing publications based on our collections. In the 1920s and ’30s, under first director Randolph G. Adams, we concentrated on publicizing our greatest area of collecting strength,...
by Sara Quashnie | Mar 30, 2021 | Featured, Publications
In the spring of 2019, former Clements Library director Kevin Graffagnino proposed the idea of a book project which would be the sequel to the Clements’ 2017 publication The Pioneer Americanists: Early Collectors, Dealers, and Bibliographers. While The Pioneer...
by Clements Library | Oct 6, 2020 | Featured, Maps, News, Publications
Mary Pedley, Assistant Map Curator at the Clements Library, is co-editor with Matthew H. Edney of The History of Cartography Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press 2019). * * * The old adage about pictures and words has...
by Clements Library | Mar 31, 2020 | Publications
The Winter-Spring 2020 Quarto is now available online. This issue is titled “The Best of the West,” inspired by an exhibition of the same name at the Clements Library. In the words of retiring Director Kevin Graffagnino, the exhibit “concentrates on printed books and...
