The Historical Society of Southern California’s Hidden Treasures, Including an Angeleno’s Civil War Diary and Letter

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-156
Author(s):  
Paul R. Spitzzeri
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
Historical Society

An account of the discovery of artifacts in the collection of the Historical Society of Southern California. Highlighted is the Civil War diary and a letter written by Charles Myers Jenkins, the only enlistee from Los Angeles to see combat for the Union during the Civil War. Included is a transcription of the November 1864 letter Jenkins wrote to his mother after his release from a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp.

The Sunland Grizzly

2014 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 56-63
Author(s):  
Josh Sides
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Los Angeles County ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Grizzly Bear ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Founding Director

In 1916, Cornelius Birket Johnson, a Los Angeles fruit farmer, killed the last known grizzly bear in Southern California and the second-to last confirmed grizzly bear in the entire state of California. Johnson was neither a sportsman nor a glory hound; he simply hunted down the animal that had been trampling through his orchard for three nights in a row, feasting on his grape harvest and leaving big enough tracks to make him worry for the safety of his wife and two young daughters. That Johnson’s quarry was a grizzly bear made his pastoral life in Big Tujunga Canyon suddenly very complicated. It also precipitated a quagmire involving a violent Scottish taxidermist, a noted California zoologist, Los Angeles museum administrators, and the pioneering mammalogist and Smithsonian curator Clinton Hart Merriam. As Frank S. Daggett, the founding director of the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art, wrote in the midst of the controversy: “I do not recollect ever meeting a case where scientists, crooks, and laymen were so inextricably mingled.” The extermination of a species, it turned out, could bring out the worst in people.

Excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, 1999–2006

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 323-378
Author(s):  
David Allen ◽  
Briony A. Lalor ◽  
Ginny Pringle
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Tobacco Pipes ◽  
House Site ◽  
Early 18Th Century

This report describes excavations at Basing Grange, Basing House, Hampshire, between 1999 and 2006. It embraces the 'Time Team' investigations in Grange Field, adjacent to the Great Barn, which were superseded and amplified by the work of the Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society, supervised by David Allen. This revealed the foundations of a 'hunting lodge' or mansion built in the 1670s and demolished, and effectively 'lost', in the mid-18th century. Beneath this residence were the remains of agricultural buildings, earlier than and contemporary with the nearby Great Barn, which were destroyed during the English Civil War. The report contains a detailed appraisal of the pottery, glass and clay tobacco pipes from the site and draws attention to the remarkable window leads that provide a clue to the mansion's date of construction. It also explores a probable link with what was taking place on the Basing House site in the late 17th and early 18th century.

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