Descripción
An interesting archive of 1850s-era material relating to the life and career of the surveyor Edward Williams, which recently surfaced in the central mother lode region. The group includes his personal letters from the California Gold Rush, as well as well two interesting documents form his work for the Surveyor General J.W. Mandeville in 1858, where he transcribed two Mexican land grants. Lt. Edward Williams was a member of Company E, New York Volunteers under Capt. Nelson Taylor. He came to California around 1847 and found employment as a deputy surveyor, later working for the Office of the Surveyor General of the Unites States for California. In 1858, Surveyor General J.W. Mandeville commissioned a report on Mexican-era California Land Grants. Mandeville had Williams copy the original documents exactly - inclusive of an ink copy on linen that is an "exact tracing" of the original documents, starting with 1834 up through about 1840. These "copies" were submitted to the Surveyor General in 1858 for use in the report. Williams continued the title work by copying other documents from about 1841, though this time not as a tracing, but hand copied on the usual blue paper of the 1850s. The documents illustrate the length officials went to while they investigated Mexican Land Grant titles to California properties in the 1850s. The process was difficult, and involved two distinctly separate cultures and legal systems that clearly conflicted. The Mexican Government granted rights for these large land parcels in California to various people, but clearly stated they could not sell parts of the property. The wording was used many times in litigation of the period in both defense of the land grants, and in opposition to how the land grants were handled. The issues were actually quite simple, in that the Mexican legal standards for land grants was far different from those in the United States, and the two differing forms of written land ownership (and use) clashed. These documents reflect a parcel of land granted to Francisco Mesa at "Corral de Tierra," a large parcel in Monterrey County, California. Mesa had requested land for "his personal use and that of his family." In the Grant, the title papers reflect "while the land is under (Francisco's) possession it cannot be divided, mortgaged, or a levy placed on it, nor handed down." These original documents help illustrate the complex story of Mexican Land Grants in California. Also included are thirteen letters from Ed (aka "Ned") to various family members, primarily his mother and sister Alice, and vice versa. About half are from Ed, the other half are written to him. The dates of the letters are; 1850: February 10th, April 15th, April 16th, April 28th, June 10th, July 30th, October 11th, and November 17th, and 1851: September 9th. One undated letter with heavy loss is written from Panama. The letters are generally readable, but the condition far from perfect, with water stains throughout and chips abundant along edges, and significant textual loss. The letters are generally at least two pages, sometimes four or more, inclusive of writing in the crossed line custom to save paper. Most are datelined at Monterrey, where he discusses the people, the customs, setting and more. Despite the condition flaws, there is much to be gleaned from his correspondence. In his April 15, 1850 letter . he describes his trip to San Juan (Bautista) from Monterrey in detail while he was on his way to San Francisco. Williams writes of his great pleasure on tasting cooked beef by the Indians that he found was the best he ever tasted as they camped on the way to San Jose, with the ultimate goal, Mission Dolores in San Francisco: "this [the beef] they put on the embers of the fire and broiled it - I never tasted anything like it before, so tender, so juicy." One of his first notes on San Francisco: "There are regular streets filled with all kinds of sorts of stores. The shipping covers the water as far as you can s. N° de ref. del artículo List1929
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