Western Americana
The American Antiquarian Society holds an
extensive collection
of materials dealing with the Trans-Mississippi West: histories of
discovery and exploration, guides for settlers, descriptions of the
countryside, and expositions of the manners and modes of living in
the frontier West. The core of these holdings is the Donald McKay
Frost Collection of more than four thousand titles that Frost
acquired over thirty years. His collection, given to the Society
in 1947, includes not only overland narratives but also town and
local histories and biographies of early settlers. Frost was an
ardent collector and tried to purchase all the rare things offered
him, including all editions of a work. AAS lacked 1,775 of the
titles Frost had acquired but already owned some of the early
titles and also a large number of government imprints and literary
titles that had not been of interest to Frost.
Many of the Frost books are in excellent condition. The
collection contains some association copies bearing author's
signatures. Among items of interest are memoirs of the Lewis and
Clark expedition; personal recollections of Zebulon Pike;
navigators for rivers, including descriptions of towns, ports, and
harbors; accounts of the Indian land titles and treaties; and
emigration guides for journeying through, and settling in, the
American West. Among the more notable items in the collection are
History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and
Clark (Philadelphia, 1814) and John Ledyard's A Journal of
Captain Cook's Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (Hartford, 1783).
The Society holds about 35 percent of the most important
titles listed in the Henry R. Wagner-Charles L. Camp bibliography,
The Plains and the Rockies: A Bibliography of Original Narratives
of Travel and Adventure, 1800-1865 (San Francisco, 1982).
Items dealing with the development of the West may be found in
other collections at AAS as well. Researchers will find relevant
materials in the collections of Dated Pamphlets and Dated Books;
Local, County, and State histories; Newspapers and Periodicals;
Graphics Arts (for maps); and in the Biography collection. Access
to all this material is through the card catalogs. In addition,
the acquisitions staff annotates the 1937 edition of Wagner-Camp's
The Plains and the Rockies to reflect additions to the Society's
collection of Western Americana. In 1991 the Society published an
exhibition catalog of materials from this collection: "Go West and
Grow Up with the Country": An Exhibition of Nineteenth-Century
Guides to the American West in the Collections of the American
Antiquarian Society.
The Society continues to add to this collection, but items
rarely appear on the market. When they do, they are purchased on
the Donald McKay Frost Fund, which was created by the bequest of
that outstanding collector.
Other items of interest to the researcher of Western Americana
are found in local histories for
the states that comprise the Trans-Mississippi West as well as railroads,
canals,
and bibliographies collections. Materials on mining, and gold-mining
in particular, may also be of interest. A more recent
bibliography on the gold rush, Gary F. Kurutz's The California Gold
Rush: a Descriptive Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets Covering the Years
1848-1853, (San Francisco, 1997) has been reviewed and annotated by
Marcus A. McCorison to
reflect AAS holdings. A copy of that
annotations list is available for researchers' use.
Materials in this collection published before 1800 and between
1821 and 1840 have been cataloged online . Other holdings are
represented by cards in the card catalog and in checklists. Work
proceeds on upgrading existing cataloging of items from the time
period 1801 through 1820 which are cataloged only briefly online.
- S.J. Wolfe, Senior Cataloger
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Distant view of the Rocky Mountains
A broadside, For California!, advertising voyages
to the Pacific coast (Boston, 1849?)
War Dance
Examples from the collection
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