CUL Digital Collections Update: July 2014

In July 2014, SMU’s Central University Libraries uploaded 459 items into our CUL Digital Collections web site. CUL Digital Collections now contain approximately 39,000 published items.

Highlights include:

Two albums of photographs by Sir Victor Sassoon. Landscapes, China and India, “Eves” and Garden, 1937 includes 24 images depicting boats and ships near Shanghai, China, as well as the transport of cars by a pontoon ferry in India. Portraits, Lucas Twins and Others, 1937-1939 includes 25 portraits and images, including Emily Hahn, Lorna and Kathleen Lucas, and other Sassoon contemporaries.

112 photographs from the Jules A. Bourquin photographs, featuring images the Horton Depot and the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad Company. Of particular note are photographs of train wrecks, as well as images of military personnel passing through Horton, Kansas, en route to the Border War with Mexico. The collection also includes photographs of railyard workers, locomotives, trains, and everyday-life scenes in Horton.

10 builder’s specification cards from the Baldwin Locomotive Works builder’s cards, including the Central of Georgia Railway, the Central Iron and Coal Company, and the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

20 pencil drawings, charcoals, and lithographs from the H.O. Robertson Papers, featuring portraits as well as landscapes depicting the southwest. Subjects depicted include portraits of people, as well as churches, sheep, houses, and landscapes in Texas, Mississippi, and Illinois.

48 photographs from the album, Columbian Naval Parade. The April 27, 1893, parade was held in conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition, which commemorated Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the in the New World 400 years earlier. The images include ships from the U.S. Navy, as well as vessels from other countries. Also included are images of replicas of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

2 photographs by William Henry Jackson, including Pueblo de Taos, New Mexico and The Rocky Mountains, Scenes Along the Line of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, ca. 1875-1884.

5 stereoviews, ca. 1880-1890 from the Collection of New Mexico stereographs.

Geronimo – Apache, 1907, by Edward S. Curtis.

H. Willard, Son & Co., Dealers in Raw Furs… Prices Current – Season 1903-1904, a circular distributed by H. Willard, Son & Co. of Marshalltown, Iowa, advertising prices offered to trappers for animal furs.

Prediger seminar der Deutschen Evangelischen Synode des westens bei Marthasville, Mo. (Preachers’ seminary of the German Evangelical Synod of the west in Marthasville, Mo.), ca. 1870-1883.

Pictorial Monogram of the State Government of Texas, 1873, H. B. Hillyer, Photographer. A composite photograph of the 1873 Texas legislators, including five African Americans, in the original frame.

114 issues of SMU’s student newspaper, The SMU Campus, covering the years 1949-1950.

Topham Family Letters, Folder 1. Simon Thornton Topham, a polygamist, wrote these letters to his second wife, Mary “Lucinda” Robinson Topham, during the years 1887-1908. Simon and his family were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Under the Edmunds-Tucker Act the government was allowed to intercept the mail of those thought to be polygamists. These letters between Simon and Lucinda are part of a larger collection of letters from the Topham family.

11 photographs of SMU campus buildings, including several no longer present, all taken in 1927 by Joseph Neland Hester. The buildings depicted are Atkins Hall, the Basketball Pavilion, Dallas Hall, Highland Park Methodist Church, Hyer Hall, Kirby Hall, McFarlin Auditorium, Ownby Stadium, Snider Hall, Virginia Hall, and the Women’s Gym.

Fort Worth Rail Yard, ca. 1923, a hand-colored print of a rail yard in Fort Worth, Texas. The photograph was taken in the early 1900s when the yard was owned by the Texas and Pacific Railway Company. At that time the yard was called Lancaster Yard after the president of the railroad, John L. Lancaster. Since then both ownership and the name of the yard have changed, and it is now known as Davidson Yard.

11 negatives by Robert Yarnall Richie of the Statue of Liberty at sunset and night on November 9, 1965, including before and during an electrical blackout.

64 non-oil-related Texas negatives by Robert Yarnall Richie as part of the TexTreasures FY2014 grant, bringing the total number to 1,066 negatives. The images uploaded in July are from 1950-1965. Major companies and organizations depicted include United Carbon Company, Inc., Southern Pacific Railroad, Seatrain Lines, Monsanto Chemical Company, General Motors Corporation, and Caddo Chemical Company, Inc. Images of note include aerial views of J. B. O’Connor Ranch, Dallas, Texas; aerial views of Downtown Dallas; aerial views of the Houston skyline at night; Diesel Locomotive 346 and freight cars, location of silver spike, Southern Pacific Railroad; aerial view of railroad yard tracks in El Paso, Texas, Southern Pacific Lines; aerial view of Aransas Pass Plant, United Carbon Company, Inc.; Seatrain Louisiana vessel at dock, Texas City, Texas, Seatrain Lines; aerial views of Monsanto Chemical Company’s Texas City Plant; aerial view of Houston Ship Channel; diesel engine trucks used by the Caddo Chemical Company, Inc.; and aerial views, external views, and interior views of Theodore Newton Law Residence, Houston, Texas, including the Picasso Living Room

The Oil Fields of Mexico with particular reference to the fields of The Tampico-Tuxpam Region, 1916, an 858-page report written by Everette DeGolyer, Sr. According to Mr. DeGolyer, the report “is a study of results achieved in exploration and exploitation by various companies engaged in the Mexican oil fields, a study of the observations made by various geologists who have worked in the region, particularly of the results obtained by these with whom the writer has been associated, and observations made by the writer during a residence of five years in the Mexican fields as a geologist to the Mexican Eagle Oil Company.”