Marshall Bond papers

The Marshall Bond Papers document the life of gold miner and adventurer Marshall Bond (1867-1941), and his family. The papers span the years 1869-1976, with the bulk falling between 1897 and 1935. The papers are organized into four series: Correspondence, Writings, Other Papers, and Photographs.

Series I, Correspondence , is organized into two subseries: Family Correspondence and Other Correspondence. The first, Family Correspondence, contains letters to and from Bond family members. It is arranged chronologically, and consists chiefly of long, detailed letters from Marshall Bond to his parents, his wife, and his sons. The most extensive group are letters written from the Klondike in 1897-98. Other letters from Bond to his family document a brief trip to Manila in 1899; his trip to Mexico in 1902 with E. Reeve Merritt and Boer General W. D. Synman; his experiences in Goldfield, Nevada, during the mining boom there in 1904; the Pancho Villa attacks on villages in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1918; and his tour through Africa in 1927. Other family correspondence includes a letter to Bond from his father, letters from his nephew Marshall Bond regarding a mining venture, and letters from cousins, including two letters from a cousin serving at the front in France during World War I. Also included in this subseries is a letter to Marshall Bond, Jr., from his cousin Edward Bond, Louis Bond's son, which contains a transcription of a letter from Jack London to Louis Bond, and of London's inscription in Louis Bond's copy of Call of the Wild.

Other Correspondence consists of letters written by non family members to Marshall Bond, Hiram G. Bond, Louis W. and Mary Bond, and Marshall Bond, Jr., as well as a few letters written to other parties. This subseries is arranged alphabetically under headings for each recipient. It consists chiefly of letters to Marshall Bond from business associates and friends, but also includes letters written to and on behalf of his father, Judge Hiram G. Bond, regarding a federal judgeship appointment in 1869, copies of letters from Mrs. Jack London to Louis and Mary Bond, and one letter to Marshall Bond, Jr., from his father's friend Osborne Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans. Copies of Marshall Bond's outgoing correspondence can be found throughout this subseries, interfiled with incoming letters from each correspondent. The letters to Marshall Bond document his mining investments and consultant work, other business ventures, and the plan to settle the Boers in Mexico in 1902, as well as his friendships with classmates from Yale and St. Paul's, business partners and associates, adventurers such as Warburton Pike and Belmore Browne, and writer Jack London. There is one letter from Jack London to Marshall Bond in the collection, in which London confirms that "Buck" in The Call of the Wild was indeed based on the Bonds' dog. The most substantial files in this subseries are those of Bond's correspondence with Richard M. Hurd, Oliver H. P. La Farge, George H. Mairs, Robert Rea, A. P. Rogers, and Lady Glover. Correspondence with Herbert H. White concerns Bond's role as an intelligence agent in an unnamed organization during World War I. Third party correspondence includes two letters from the Klondike in 1898 written by a man named Charlie, a typescript of a World War I letter from A. B. E. Cator, and copies of letters concerning Warburton Pike.

Series II, Writings , includes Bond's diary from the Klondike in 1897-98 and draft chapters of an uncompleted book about his Klondike experience; clippings of newspaper articles he wrote about the gold rush in Goldfield, Nevada, and Idaho in 1902-5 and about Pancho Villa in 1918; and a typescript carbon of his diary from his hunting trip on the Stikine River in 1911. Other writings include a short story about Africa, which accompanies a letter and is stored with the letter in Series I, and pages of his diary documenting a 1926 trip with New Mexico Governor Miguel Otero to interview surviving associates of Billy the Kid in Lincoln County, New Mexico, which are in his photo album from that trip, in Series IV.

Series III, Other Papers , includes a contract between Marshall Bond and L. W. Fox of Dawson City in 1897, witnessed by Jack London and Louis Bond; maps of the Yukon Territory and Alaska; a copy of a mine report; and an essay by Oliver H. P. La Farge about a camping trip he took with the Bonds. Also present is a bound typescript of a book by Marshall Bond, Jr., Adventures with Peons, Princes and Tycoons, with photographs tipped in (this book was later published by Star Rover House, 1983).

Series IV, Photographs , contains one photograph of Marshall Bond in his undergraduate years at Yale; forty-five commercially produced photographs of Dawson City and the Klondike region, the majority of them by Eric A. Hegg, with a few by Larss and Duclos, one by Case and Draper, and one by M. Craig; two personal photographs of the Bonds' cabin in Dawson and its inhabitants, one of which includes the dog that inspired Jack London's The Call of the Wild; photographs of Judge Bond and his wife Laura, Louis and Mary Bond and their children, and Marshall and Amy Bond with their son Richard in 1906 at New Park, the Judge's Santa Clara house on which London based the setting of the beginning of The Call of the Wild, as well as photos of the interior and exterior of the house itself; a portrait of Marshall Bond with Boer General W. D. Snyman and E. Reeve Merritt taken in Mexico City during their official visit on behalf of Boer refugees in 1902; snapshots of the Goldfield, Nevada mines, miners, and the Bond family's cabin there in 1904; two photos of miners in Jarbridge, Nevada in 1910; and a studio portrait of Marshall Bond in middle-age.

There are also two photo albums in this series. One documents Bond's hunting trip on the Stikine River in Alaska in 1911, and includes photos of Warburton Pike, Lord Osborne Beauclerk (later Duke of St. Albans), and Bond's older son Richard. The other album documents a trip Bond took in 1926 with his son Marshall, New Mexico Governor Miguel Otero, and Mrs. Otero to interview surviving associates of Billy the Kid; it includes pictures of Frank and George Coe and their wives, Susan E. (McSween) Barber, and others. Also present are loose commercial reproductions of photos of Billy the Kid and other Wild West figures such as the James Gang.