Page:Hubert Howe Bancroft His Work and His Method.djvu/1



At the 1911 meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft was honored by being elected to the office of President. In view of this recognition, and also of the fact that Mr. Bancroft rounds out his four score years on the 5th of May, 1912, it may be appropriate for the Historical Society of Southern California to pause in its annual meeting in order freshly to bring to memory the leading events of this interesting life, review the stages of development of that unique library known as the Bancroft Collection, and briefly consider the methods employed in bringing to early completion the thirty-nine stout volumes comprising the History of the Pacific States, the main body of his works.

In this paper much use has been made of Bancroft's supplemental volume entitled Literary Industries, which—we are assured—was written with his own hand. It is intended that the extracts introduced from this volume, with less frequent quotations from other volumes, shall serve to reflect somewhat of the author's style as well as to supply something of the flavor of the atmosphere (if one may so speak) in which the work that bears his name was done. The page references in parenthesis, unless otherwise indicated, are to the volume Literary Industries.

Bancroft was born in Granville, Ohio, on the 5th of May, 1832. He came of good New England stock, he himself informing us that his great-great-grandfather came over from London in 1632. His father was born in Granville, Massachusetts, in 1799; his mother, born the same year, was a native of Vermont. The marriage was celebrated Feb. 21, 1822; and a golden wedding was held in their son's house in San Francisco in 1872. Bancroft tells us that he was born "into an atmosphere of pungent and invigorating puritanism," - an atmosphere which he certainly succeeded in escaping in after years. As a boy he worked hard on a farm, passing a childhood that was not "particularly happy; or if it was, its sorrows are deeper graven on my memory than its joys." (73.) A timid youth, "I threw around myself (he says) a wall of solitude within which admittance was given by few." (75)