Hubert Howe Bancroft | |
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| Born | May 5, 1832 |
| Died | March 2, 1918(1918-03-02) (aged 85) |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Known for | Early histories of the North American west |
| Signature | |
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Hubert Howe Bancroft (May 5, 1832 – March 2, 1918) was an American historian andethnologist who wrote, published, and collected works concerning theWestern United States,Texas,California,Alaska,Mexico,Central America, andBritish Columbia.
Hubert Howe Bancroft was born on May 5, 1832, inGranville, Ohio, to Azariah Ashley Bancroft and Lucy Howe Bancroft. The Howe and Bancroft families originally hailed from theNew England states ofVermont andMassachusetts, respectively.[1] Bancroft's parents were staunchabolitionists and the family home was a station on theUnderground Railroad.[2]
Bancroft attended the Doane Academy in Granville for a year, and he then became a clerk in his brother-in-law's bookstore inBuffalo, New York.[3]
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In March 1852, Bancroft was provided with an inventory of books to sell and was sent to the boomingCalifornia city ofSan Francisco to set up a West Coast regional office of the firm.[1] Bancroft was successful in building his company, entering the world of publishing in the process.[1] He also became a serious collector of books, building a collection numbering into the tens of thousands of volumes.[1]
In 1868, he resigned from his business in favor of his brother, A.L. Bancroft. He had accumulated a great library of historical material and abandoned business to devote himself entirely to writing and publishing history.[4]
Bancroft's library consisted of books, maps, and printed and manuscript documents, including a large number of narratives dictated to Bancroft or his assistants by pioneers, settlers, and statesmen. The indexing of the vast collection employed six persons for ten years. The library was moved in 1881 to a fireproof building and, in 1900, numbered about 45,000 volumes.[4]
He developed a plan to publish a history in 39 volumes of the entire Pacific coast region of North America, from Central America to Alaska. He employed writers and wrote some of the material himself, though he credited only himself as an author. In 1886, the publishing establishment of A.L. Bancroft & Company burned, and the sheets of seven volumes of the history he had written were destroyed.[4]
Bancroft's first marriage was to Emily Ketchum in 1859. They had one child, a daughter named Kate who was born in 1859. Emily died in childbirth in 1869. In 1879, Bancroft married his second wife, Matilda Coley Griffing, with whom he had four children.[1]
Although he never graduated from college, in 1875 Bancroft was awarded an honoraryMaster of Arts degree fromYale in recognition of his massive historical work onNative Races of the Pacific States.[5] He was also elected a member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society in 1875.
He died on March 2, 1918, at his country home inWalnut Creek, California.[6] "Acuteperitonitis" was blamed as the cause of death in publishednewspaper reports.[5][7][8] Bancroft was 85 at his death. His body was interred in theCypress Lawn Memorial Park inColma, California.
Bancroft often published writing by others under his own name, fitting others' writing into a narrative of history as Bancroft saw it. This "literary factory" style of production resulted in writing of uneven quality. By modern standards Bancroft would not be considered the author of many of the works he attributed to himself; he often failed to give adequate credit to the contributing writers.[9] Bancroft's staff copied and summarized material in archives throughout California and the Southwest, and collected oral histories. The result was 39 volumes of history attributed to Bancroft.[10]
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo served as Bancroft's contact among theCalifornios. Based on interviews, Vallejo produced a five-volume work of history for Bancroft. Vallejo was disappointed by how Bancroft used the work, subsuming the stories of Mexicans into a master narrative organized around the Gold Rush. Bancroft tried to purchase the writing of historian Antonio María Osio, who refused to sell so that Bancroft could not credit himself as the author of her work.[11]
Bancroft's personal views appear conflicted and are difficult to know exactly because he published writing by others under his own name. According to theBancroft Library:
Bancroft's writings and work are riddled with contradictions, tensions, and ambiguities. For instance, while using the racist language of the day to discuss Chinese immigrants in the United States, Bancroft also opposedChinese exclusion and spent pages ofRetrospection excoriatingDenis Kearney, one of the leaders of the anti-Chinese campaign in California. In a similar vein, he wrote unquestionably bigoted and offensive things about African Americans, while at the same time holding "anti-slavery" perspectives and coming from an abolitionist family. He was similarly dismissive of women, and yet interviewed Californio and Mormon women as part of his history project.
— Bancroft Library Reckoning Committee Final Report, UC Berkeley Chancellor's office, 2025
Bancroft's writing expressed support forvigilance committees in the West.[12] Bancroft celebrated "the honor of the first popular tribunal of theplacer mining epoch" inHangtown, a place named for its many vigilante lynchings.[13]
In the late 19th century, it was determined that much of the work of which Bancroft claimed authorship had in fact been written by others. This tainted his legacy in the eyes of some scholars, on the principle "false in one thing, false in all."[14][15] TheSalt Lake Tribune called him a "purloiner of other peoples' brains" in 1893.[16]
TheBancroft Library atUC Berkeley, reflects the collector's name. TheUniversity of California purchased his 60,000-volume book collection in 1905.
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In 1885 Bancroft purchased a ranch with an adobe cottage located inSpring Valley, in San Diego County, as a retirement home. TheHubert H. Bancroft Ranch House is now aNational Historic Landmark. In addition, part of a property Bancroft bought around 1880 inContra Costa County, California, later became theRuth Bancroft Garden, when three acres of the remaining farm land was given by Bancroft's grandson Philip to his wife,Ruth Bancroft.[17]
Several schools are named for Bancroft, includingBancroft Middle School (Long Beach, California),Bancroft Middle School (Los Angeles, California), Hubert H. Bancroft Elementary School inSacramento, California, Bancroft Middle School inSan Leandro, California, Bancroft Elementary School inWalnut Creek, California, and Bancroft Community School inSpring Valley, California.[18]
Contrary to some sources, including Bancroft's own obituary,[5] Bancroft Way inBerkeley, California is not named for Hubert Howe Bancroft, but rather for historian and statesmanGeorge Bancroft.[19]
An archive of Bancroft family correspondence, collected by his daughter Kate, is held in Special Collections and Archives atGeisel Library at theUniversity of California, San Diego.[20]
Recollections of Hubert Howe Bancroft and the Bancroft Family, an oral history interview withMargaret Wood Bancroft, widow of Bancroft's son Griffing, is held in theOral History Center of theBancroft Library at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[21]
Bancroft's written works include the following, with the 39-volume set of The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft (pub. 1874–1890):[22]
Bancroft made use ofindex cards in the organization and compilation of facts for his lengthy and massive series of historical volumes.[6] In the course of his organization of source material and writing, Bancroft made use of scores of research assistants, the contributions of some of whom amounted to the output of co-writers.[6]
Originally he seems to have intended to use topical sections of writing produced by his assistants as the basis of a broad narrative which he himself would write, but as the work progressed he came to use the statements as they were, with only slight changes. He said his assistants were capable investigators, and there is evidence that some of them deserved his confidence;Frances Fuller Victor, in particular, was a well-known author. However, his failure to acknowledge each contribution created doubt about the quality of the work. Overall, although Bancroft considered himself the author of his works, in contemporary terms it is more accurate to consider him an editor and compiler.[27]
Neither Bancroft, nor most of his assistants, had enough training to avoid stating their personal opinions and enthusiasms, but their works were generally well received in their time. HistorianFrancis Parkman praised Bancroft'sThe Native Races inThe North American Review. Lewis Henry Morgan's essay, "Montezuma's Dinner," rebuts Lewis Henry Morgan's ideas about gradations of civilization. In turn, Morgan's essay was based on Friedrich Engels' "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan." Bancroft critiqued Morgan's understanding of stages of civilization and savagery. Both Morgan's and Engels' ideas are most certainly antiquated and reveal a profound and mechanistic understanding of human development.
Bancroft's histories have been bitterly attacked on grounds of prejudice and failure to give adequate recognition to contributing authors. " . .. produced in a literary factory ... the work of many hands, they are spotty in quality": - Phil Townsend Hanna in Zamorano 80. "As time passes and prejudice drifts into obscurity, these works become more strongly entrenched each year. For scholars and investigators they will always remain the greatest source of authority": - Cowan.
Johnson, Rossiter, ed. (1906). "Bancroft, Hubert Howe".The Biographical Dictionary of America. Vol. 1. Boston: American Biographical Society. p. 204.
