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Roberts Collection

About this Collection

Henry E. Roberts was photo concessioner for General Grant National Park from 1900-1930 and operated the Grant Grove Studio from 1914 to 1935, selling images of park scenes to visitors and in large measure determining the public image of General Grant National Park. His collection consists of 211 glass plate negatives of various sizes, 635 nitrate and acetate negatives, 464 loose miscellaneous photographs, 140 stereographs, 56 color and black and white slides, and 151 pieces of correspondence. The negatives and prints depict the history of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park starting with the logging era in Converse Basin and ending with the creation of Kings Canyon National Park in the 1940s. They also depict Roberts and his family and a handful of family trips taken outside the Central Valley. The 140 Stereographs seem to depict one specific trip Henry Roberts and his wife Edna took to what is now the Rae Lakes Loops region in Kings Canyon. A small portion of the negatives, prints, and glass plates are not attributed to Roberts as indicated by signatures on the photographs. Some of the logging photographs are taken by Charles C. Curtis or A. R. Moore.
The correspondence and personal materials are primarily that of Henry Roberts’ wife, Edna Roberts. The letters include personal letters from her family, some on the topic of various legal issues concerning land in Alaska which had belonged to her Uncle Charles McNett. The personal papers include the legal documents and divorce papers of Henry and Edna as well as immigration documents of Edna’s new husband, J. Ross Lindsay, who was Canadian.
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Type of Item

1,152 items found in this collection

of 48
of 48