A Latina Lecturing at the Library

Getting to view the treasures in an archive is a wonder to me.    Those of us who are history nerds view this as a bit of Nirvana.  Truly.  I find being in an archive both invigorating and soothing. It is place of bliss.

Every once in a while I get to share my discoveries with a larger group.  A couple of years ago I shared images that I "discovered" in the holdings of the Huntington Library.  These were images that had been donated in the 1920s and hadn't been seen for perhaps some 60 years.

The pictures were of the folks I'll be talking about this coming Thursday at a free lecture I'll be giving at the Huntington Library.

The Elliott family came from Indiana  - informed by the sentiments of the time that were in support of women's suffrage, abolition, care of the mentally ill, who also had knowledge of, and experience in, business.

The Bandini family came from Perú and México.  They were a part of the aristocracy that we know as the Californios.   They were landed gentry, the younger generation educated in two cultures and able to share insights into to the life lived in the early 19th century in California.

The interactions between these families exemplifies a good deal of what was being experienced at the end of the19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in the San Gabriel Valley and in the City of Pasadena.

Please join me at the lecture.  I'll share some serious facts and some chuckles along the way.  I believe there'll be some time for questions, too.  If the pattern of the past remains true, we're all likely learn a thing or two.