Consists of the legal correspondence of J.L. Folsom and his San Francisco lawyers, H.W. Halleck, A.C. Peachy and P. Warren Van Winkle, regarding Folsom's San Francisco tenants and properties. Also contains letters from Folsom's New York lawyers, Snydum, Reed & Co., regarding Folsom's acquisition of William A. Leidesdorff's property from his mother, Anna Maria Sparks. After Folsom's death, Halleck, Peachy, and Van Winkle became his estate's executors, and continued Folsom's legal correspondence. Also includes a statement "In the matter of the Estate of J.L. Folsom", a bill remitted by Folsom, and leases signed by Folsom. Finally, there is one deed signed by Jacob C. Biedermann.
Accounts and legal papers (originals or copies) pertaining to the administration of the estate of W.A. Leidesdorff. Each item cataloged separately. Part I - Papers relating to Leidesdorff's land grant. Part II - papers relating to W.D.M. Howard's administration of the estate. Part III - Papers relating to Joseph L. Folsom's administration of the estate.
In this wide-ranging study Stephen Foster explores Puritanism in England and America from its roots in the Elizabethan era to the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing on Puritanism as a cultural and political phenomenon as well as a religious movement, Foster addresses parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic and firmly embeds New England Puritanism within its English context. He provides not only an elaborate critque of current interpretations of Puritan ideology but also an original and insightful portrayal of its dynamism. According to Foster, Puritanism represented a loose and incomplete alliance of progressive Protestants, lay and clerical, aristocratic and humble, who never decided whether they were the vanguard or the remnant. Indeed, in Foster's analysis, changes in New England Puritanism after the first decades of settlement did not indicate secularization and decline but instead were part of a pattern of change, conflict, and accomodation that had begun in England. He views the Puritans' own claims of declension as partisan propositions in an internal controversy as old as the Puritan movement itself. The result of these stresses and adaptations, he argues, was continued vitality in American Puritanism during the second half of the seventeenth century. Foster draws insights from a broad range of souces in England and America, including sermons, diaries, spiritual autobiographies, and colony, town, and court records. Moreover, his presentation of the history of the English and American Puritan movements in tandem brings out the fatal flaws of the former as well as the modest but essential strengths of the latter.
William Alexander Leidesdorff is probably one of the best-kept secrets in the pioneering of the West and the creation of the State of California. Born out of wedlock in St. Croix, Danish West Indies in 1810 to a Jewish Danish sugar planter and a black plantation worker, he went on to become the first Black millionaire when gold was found on his property shortly before he died in 1848.
For forty years Ogden Hoffman presided over the federal district court for the Northern District of California, disposing of more than nineteen thousand cases brought before him. Federal Justice in California: The Court of Ogden Hoffman, 1851-1891 considers a career remarkable for longevity and productivity and at the same time examines the operation of a federal trial court in nineteenth-century America - the cases adjudicated, their significance, and the court's impact upon the community. Solidly researched, Christian G. Fritz's book is unique in attending to the law on the level at which it was most often encountered by participants in legal actions. During his four decades on the bench, from the time of the California gold rush to the anti-Chinese movement of the 1880s, Hoffman dealt one-on-one with a cross-section of humanity: through his court came sea captains, seamen seeking their wages, wealthy steamship owners and distraught and injured passengers, and Chinese immigrants. Fritz shows him adjudicating land grant conflicts and bankruptcy cases and presiding over the admiralty, criminal, and common law and equity dockets. The author has examined thousands of Hoffman's cases to gain insight into how nineteenth-century federal trial courts were used, by whom, and with what effect. The successful use that a broad range of plaintiffs made of Hoffman's court requires a re-examination of theories suggesting that law of the period primarily developed and courts largely operated in ways that promoted commercial and entrepreneurial interest. Just as important, Fritz's sensitive analysis of an institution never loses sight of the proud life-long bachelor, native New Yorker, and scion of adistinguished family who always identified himself with his court. Christian G. Fritz is a professor of law at the University of New Mexico.
The Huntington Library houses a wealth of material pertaining to legal history. The collections that deal with California law are predominantly from the nineteenth century and involve real estate, agriculture, and industries such as mining, oil, and commerce. For the lawyer of the period, these areas of activity generated a large property and contract law practice. Manuscripts relating to property law involve the acquisition, development, use, and transfer of real estate. Contract law documents in the collections pertain to the transactions of a dynamic era of entrepreneurialism in the nineteenth century. This guide provides access to the collections for scholars and attorneys researching California legal, social, and business history. Compiled by Gordon Bakken, under the direction of the Committee on History of Law in California of the State Bar of California, the guide has been published with the generous support of various foundations, law firms, and attorneys. It will encourage research in legal history and facilitate a deeper understanding of the development of American law. The guide has two main parts, each supporting a very different approach to historical research. The Subject Access Guide is essentially a subject index to relevant manuscript materials at the Huntington. The objective is to lead researchers to individual documents and to sets of documents by their subject. Using subject headings familiar to most attorneys, historians, and other researchers, the guide identifies the type of material, subject matter, and date as well as the location of manuscript sources. The second part of the guide is a description of collections of interest to legal historians. That part assesses the significance of each collection for research purposes.
