NEWSPAPER CLIPPING ALBUM WITH MATERIAL RELATING TO THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH ERA

Original register volume used to record transactions for 1850 for the grocery firm of Schroder, Schulte & Co., San Francisco, which has been converted into a scrapbook for newspaper clippings shortly thereafter. 8vo, original brown calf-backed mottled boards. Approximately 200 pages, with all but 10 having neatly cut newspaper clippings pasted over the original handwritten accounting register. Entire leaf from an 1854 issue of the San Francisco Extra Herald laid in. Some discoloration from adhesive used throughout, but legible and very good overall. A most interesting volume. The preserved title page is neatly inscribed "Day Book for Schroder Schulte & Co San Francisco" in black ink faded a bit to brown. The entire volume would appear to have been used for its original purpose, though nearly every page has subsequently been pressed into service as backing for a newspaper clipping album. The clippings concern a number of different subjects, and would seem simply to be whatever caught the scrapbooker's attention. Included are a printed letter to the editor by Augustus Humbert responding to a question on the value of the silver content in the alloy of gold coins, material on the deposits of California gold at Philadelphia and New York in 1851-1852, articles on California gold mine production, robberies, "California Gold Mining Reminiscences" published in 1852 (and we thought being nostalgic about the immediate past was a modern trait!), and other related items. The keeper of the album would appear to have been of both a scientific and artistic turn of mind, with many articles of scientific interest interspersed with bits of oratory and poetry. A really fascinating volume to which we're incapable of doing justice in a brief description.