Collection consists of a two volumes titled "Journal of a Cruise from Norfolk, Virginia to the Pacific Ocean in the United States Frigate United States, Isaac Hull, Esq'r, Commander" kept by Philadelphian midshipman Lawrence Penington from 4 December 1823, through 22 April 1827. United States was one of six frigates authorized to be constructed by the Naval Act of 1794 and it served as the flagship for Commodore Hull who was head of the American naval squadron on the Pacific Coast of South America. Penington documents navigation statistics, weather reports and daily ship life, along with the larger issues of interaction between the American naval squadron and British, Spanish, Chilean, Colombian and Peruvian naval and military counterparts.
This archive covers the early life and long United States Army career of Brigadier General George T. Bowman (b. 1869 and d. 1951). His career included service (stateside) during the Spanish-American War with the New York 65th Volunteer Infantry, with various New York volunteer and regular Army units in the Philippines (1899-1904), in Cuba (1906-1909), with Gen. John Pershing on the Mexican border (1915-1916), during World War I (1918-1919), and in Germany after World War I ended. Included are correspondence, orders and other military documents, photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, maps, narratives and commentary by Bowman, and a diary.
This collection contains a journal (November 21, 1894 – February 28, 1896) kept by Gilbert Smith Galbraith while he was serving as a U.S. Naval Cadet on board the USS Columbia. The USS Columbia was a Second Line Cruiser first commissioned on April 23, 1894, serving in the U.S. Navy until it was sold for scrap on January 23, 1922. Galbraith includes detailed technical descriptions of the ship and its components along with diagrams, blueprints, scale plans, maps, photographic prints, cyanotypes and various ephemera. Additionally, Galbraith records the ship's activities from November 21, 1894, to February 28, 1896.
Collection (1917-1933, bulk 1918-1919) mainly consists of correspondence (29 May 1918-29 April 1919; 115 letters) between U.S. Army Pvt. Roscoe Jackson and his wife Lucile E. Jackson of Barnesville, Belmont Co., Ohio, and also with his father, mother-in-law, and grandfather during World War I. He writes from Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, Camp Mills in Long Island, New York, and from France where he is serving with the 138th U.S. Infantry, A.E.F.
Papers (April 1942 – April 1943, undated) consisting mainly of photographic prints originally belonging to a photograph album compiled by David Y. Taylor, documenting progress on several troubled U.S. Navy construction project contracts to build shipyards and ship repair facilities in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia; including contracts awarded to Charleston Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, the Clifford F. MacEvoy Company, the Savannah Machine & Foundry Company, and to its Shipbuilding Division; including projects to construct plant facilities, dry docks and floating dry docks, caissons, retaining walls, coffer dams, graving docks, piers, wharfs, pilings, and bulkheads, etc.; the photographs also show work crews, including racially integrated crews, and equipment, including: railroads, docks, buildings, trucks, cranes, and pile drivers; also including the leather-bound front cover of the original photograph album.
Papers (1914-1988, undated) of David Balcombe, an enlisted man in the 1st Battalion, 4th Queen's West Surrey Territorial Regiment (Reserve) in India during World War I, 1914-1917; he later served as an instrument mechanic in India and Egypt in the Royal Flying Corps, 1917-1918. Consists primarily of correspondence (1914-1919) from David Balcombe to his parents in South Norwood, Surrey, England, plus clippings, ephemera, and photographs of India. Also included are letters (1928-1935) from Walter George Courtice to his sister Ruby R. Courtice, during his residency in Durban, South Africa.
Personal Correspondence (December 30, 1861-September 16, 1862; April 1863) written by William Wilberforce Douglas to his family members during his service in the Fifth Rhode Island Volunteers and in General Ambrose Burnside's Expeditionary Corps in North Carolina. Letters, copied by his mother, Sarah Sawyer Douglas, from originals into a single bound journal, include references to his time at the battles of Roanoke Island, New Bern, and Fort Macon. Additionally, the journal includes newspaper clippings accounting his exploits in the war.