BANCROFT, Hubert Howe, American historian; b. Granville, Ohio, 5 May 1832; d. Walnut Creek, Cal., 2 March 1918, He worked on his father's farm and attended the academy until 16, when he entered as clerk a bookstore in Buffalo whose proprietor three years later sent him with a stock of boolcs to open business in San Francisco where he ar nved in March 1852. While building up a large bookselling and publishing business the ypung man became interested in gathering ma terial for the history of this new and fascinat ing land, until his collections reached 60,000 books, maps and MSS., when he erected for it a library building on Valencia street. Here it remained until it passed into the possession of the University of California at Berkeley. Am bitious at length to reduce this vast wealth of material to forms of practical utility, Mr. Ban croft put at work a dozen men to classify and extract the essential facts of history and de velopment and place the results in his hands in proper form for writing a series of histories covering the western half of North America, from Alaska to Panama, as he had planned.
This work covered a period of 30 years, and the result was the publication of the following series:
Races of the Pacific
(5 vols.);