(San Francisco earthquake)

Three correspondences about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.  San Francisco, April–May 1906



Tiwena, Jennie. Autograph letter signed, in pencil,  2 pages (9 1/8  x 6 in.; 232 x 153 mm), Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, 20 April [1906], to "Gussie"; vertical and horizontal folds, some browning, roughly torn along left margin with paper loss, but no word loss — Smith, Willett.  Augtograph postcard and 5 Autograph Letters Signed ("Willett"), in pencil, 41 pages (various sizes), "Ruins of San Francisco", 20 April–20 May 1906, to his mother and sisters in Freeport, Long Island; condition varies, but generally good; with 3 autograph envelopes — Anonymous. Autograph letter signed ("B. & H."), in pencil, 16 pages (9 x 6 in.; 228 x 153 mm) on brown wrapping paper, [San Francisco], 5 May 1906, to "My Dear Folks"; some staining and marginal chipping.



 

A fine collection of vivid eyewitness accounts of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and its aftermath. 

Willett Smith of Long Island arrived in San Francisco the day of the quake.  He wrote home on 22 April, "I got here at six oclockwith my friend and we went around town and took in the sights and my friend and I looked for a rooming house for the night and we was going up to one of the big places but I dont know what told me it seems it was nature not to go and I didnt so I went down to the water front and got a room at a place I knew.  We wnt to bed about 11 o'clock and must have been sleeping on the edge of the bed because I was thrown on the floor by the shock.  I and my friend tried to get out of the room and the door was jammed.  We bursted it to splinters.  The stairs and halls was full of flying transomes and plaster.  We rushed downstairs and across to the docks and we was dodging live wires and bricks and everything.  There we were in our underclothes.  The house went in a heap.  We got a pair a pants and a jumper out of a broken clothing store window .... [W]hen we camw to our senses from the fright the whole town was blazing in twenty different places .... the fire burned so fierce it drove us up town and we had to run.  It seemend the fire just roared."

This passage is typical of the immediacy of these first-hand accounts of one of the defining events in California history.