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James B. Pond papers, 1863-ca. 1940s

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Summary

Creator:
Pond, James B., 1838-1903
Abstract:
This collection is made up of autobiographical manuscripts, correspondence, documents, and family photograph albums related to James B. Pond, Sr. and Jr. Some of the items pertain to Pond's service during the Civil War and both father and son's lecture business.
Extent:
1 linear foot and 5 volume
Language:
English
Authors:
Collection processed and finding aid created by Meg Hixon, 2014, and Erin Berger, 2019

Background

Scope and Content:

This collection is made up of autobiographical manuscripts, correspondence, documents, and family photograph albums related to James B. Pond, Sr. and Jr. Some of the items pertain to Pond Sr.'s service during the Civil War and both father and son's lecture business.

The Pond Family Papers series includes one box containing miscellaneous correspondence ranging in date from 1896-1932, Civil War related material, autobiographical sketches, family photographs, and personal photograph albums.

The Civil War related material includes a few items relating to James Pond's Civil War service in the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry, among which are a typescript of official reports relating to the massacre at Baxter Springs, Kansas, a printed poem on the massacre, and a printed notice of the death in the 1880s of William T. Brayton of the 3rd Cavalry. Pond also collected other reminiscences of the war, including an autobiographical account of Mrs. Horn, wife of a Missouri surgeon, which includes a description of Quantrill's raiders pillaging town and taking her husband prisoner, and a memoir of Edward P. Bridgman, a soldier in the 37th Massachusetts Infantry who served with John Brown in 1856, and may have known Pond.

More than half of this series consists of autobiographical manuscripts, parts of which, at least, were published as magazine articles. Most of these focus on his early years (prior to 1861) when he and his family were living a marginal existence in frontier Wisconsin and when he was a young man in search of a livelihood. The collection includes three major manuscripts, each present in several copies or versions, all of which are related to each other - "A Pioneer Boyhood," "The American Pioneer: My Life as a Boy," and "Pioneer Days" - plus there are less polished manuscripts of childhood and Civil War reminiscences. All appear to have been written initially in 1890, though some copies were apparently made several years later. In addition, there is an autobiographical sketch "How I got started in the Lecture Business" in which he describes his part in Anna Eliza Young's "apostatizing" and entering onto the lecture circuit.

The collection also contains 5 photograph albums. These volumes contain over 800 personal photographs taken between 1896 and 1902, including many pictures of family members at leisure both indoors and outdoors and Pond's business acquaintances from his lecture agency. Travel photographs include views of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, as well as a group of pictures taken during a visit to England, Switzerland, and Germany in 1901. European items include a series of colored prints, located in Volume 4. The albums contain images of locomotives, railroad cars, and steamships. Volume 1 contains images of the inauguration of William McKinley and Volume 2 contains images of crowds gathered for a GAR parade in Buffalo, New York. Throughout the albums are glimpses of various lecture tours and clients including John Watson (Ian Maclaren) and Anthony Hope in Volume 2 and Francis Marion Crawford in Volume 3. Other notable figures include Sam Walter Foss and William Dean Howells in Volume 1, Charles W. Blair and Edward William Bok in Volume 3, and Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Charles William Stubbs, Robert Stawell Ball, Horace Porter, Frank Thomas Bullen, and Israel Zangwill in Volume 4. In addition to the albums, there are loose photographs of family, James B. Pond Jr., and the Adventurers' Club of New York. Oversized photographs are housed in Box 3.

The Pond Lecture Bureau Papers series consists of one box containing client files (arranged chronologically), loose photographs, and ephemera. Much of the content consists of correspondence between clients/prospective clients and photographs of clients (likely for promotional material). This series spans from 1877 to the 1940s covering periods of ownership from both James B. Pond, Sr. and Jr. Some of these clients are as follows: Henry Ward Beecher, Reverend Joseph Parker, Thomas DeWitt Talmage, Leon Pierre Blouet, Reverend John Watson (Ian Maclaren), William Winter, Edward Rickenbacker, Harry A. Franck, Gunnar Horn, Maurice Brown, and Major Radclyffe Dugmore. Unidentified oversized photographs and a scrapbook are housed in Box 3.

Biographical / Historical:

In 1836, Willard E. Pond, a traveling salesman from Connecticut, met and married Eurana Woodford in Tompkins Co., N.Y. The young couple and their rapidly growing family lived in a succession of different towns in upstate New York before Willard and his uncle "caught the Illinois fever" in 1843 and convinced their families to emigrate west. Settling first in Illinois in 1844, and then in Alto, Wis., in 1847, the Ponds eked out a meager living farming the prairie. Cash was scarce for the family, and the Ponds lived in constant debt, always on the edge of poverty.

Born in 1838, James Burton Pond was one of the oldest of the 11 children of Willard and Eurana. His father, an ardent abolitionist, had raised his sons with an iron hand, inspiring fear as much as attention to proper conduct. At the age of eighteen, James followed his conscience and left home to join John Brown in the antislavery struggle in Kansas, and he fought with the man he considered to be a noble Christian for almost a year. After Brown's defeat at Osawatomie, James wandered to St. Louis, where he worked as a call boy at a theater and as a printer at a religious newspaper, before ending up in Janesville and a position on the staff of a newspaper. Not being one to remain anywhere for too long, James joined a gold mining expedition to Colorado in the spring of 1859, ending up with a party of miners at Clear Creek that included George M. Pullman and H.S. Curtis, son of General Samuel Curtis. When Pond's western adventure panned out in October, he returned "to the States" and his family home in Wisconsin.

As a staunch anti-slavery Republican, Pond joined a Wide Awake club in 1860, and he and his brothers were quick to volunteer for service at the onset of the Civil War. Arriving too late to find a berth in the 1st Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, Pond attempted to enlist again after Bull Run, receiving a commission as 2nd Lieutenant in Co. G, 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry, a company that included two of his younger brothers as well. The 3rd Cavalry served in Kansas and Missouri throughout the war, engaged in some of the nastiest guerrilla warfare. The 3rd Cavalry Regiment and 2nd Kansas (Colored) Infantry were victims of a brutal surprise attack and massacre by William Quantrill's irregulars in October, 1863, during which Pond distinguished himself for his courage in single-handedly manning a howitzer and repelling the raiders. Despite his efforts, Quantrill's men killed Maj. H.S. Curtis and 65 Federals at Baxter Springs, and many more at the camp Pond defended, many of whom were executed after they had surrendered. Pond and both his brothers came through unscathed, a fact they attributed to the prayers of their devoutly religious mother. Pond was later promoted to Captain.

After the war, Pond traveled throughout the country, ending up in Salt Lake City in the early 1870s. In about 1874, an opportunity presented itself for Pond to make some money, when Anna Eliza Young, 19th wife Brigham Young, "apostasized" from her Mormon faith and was enticed to embark on a speaking tour in the east. Pond, in the right place at the right time, secured a position as booking agent for what became a highly lucrative tour, and subsequently branched out in conjunction with the Redpath Lyceum Bureau into managing other speaking tours throughout the U.S. and Canada. He left Redpath to begin his own lecture bureau in New York City in 1879, and over the next twenty years, became the nation's premier lecture agent. Pond promised his solidly middle-class audience "concerts, lectures and all descriptions of musical, lyceum and literary entertainments," and delivered such luminaries as Henry Stanley, George Kennan, Bill Nye, James Whitcomb Riley, Thomas Nast, Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, P.T. Barnum, George Washington Cable, Ellen Terry, Joseph Jefferson, and Henry Ward Beecher.

Pond wrote numerous magazine articles, autobiographies and stories, as well as at least four books based on his experiences as a tour promoter and manager. His books included Overland with Mark Twain (Elmira, N.Y., 1992), A Summer in England with Henry Ward Beecher (N.Y., 1887), and Henry Ward Beecher (Brooklyn, 1897), and Eccentricities of Genius (N.Y., 1900).

Pond married twice in his life; the second time to Martha Marion Glass in 1880. With Martha he had a son, James B. Pond, Jr., born December 25, 1889, often referred to as “Bim.” After Pond Sr.’s death in 1903, due to complications from gangrene, Pond Jr. succeeded his father in owning and operating the Pond Lecture Bureau. James B. Pond, Jr., died March 8, 1961.

Acquisition Information:
1990, 1994, 2003, 2017, 2024. M-2573, M-3073, M-4372, M-6089.1, M-8349 .
Processing information:

Cataloging partly funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). This collection has been processed according to minimal processing procedures and may be revised, expanded, or updated in the future.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged in the following series and sub-series:

  • Series I: Pond Family Papers
    • Sub-series I: Correspondence
    • Sub-series II: Civil War Documents
    • Sub-series III: Autobiographical Material
    • Subseries IV: Photographs
  • Series II: Pond Lecture Bureau Papers
    • Sub-series I: Client Files
    • Sub-series II: Loose Photographs
    • Sub-series III: Ephemera

Rules or Conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Subjects

Click on terms below to find any related finding aids on this site.

Subjects:
Fathers and sons.
Fourth of July celebrations.
Frontier and pioneer life.
Frontier and pioneer life--Wisconsin.
Guerrillas.
Lectures and lecturing.
Migration, Internal.
Revivals.
Thanksgiving Day.
Parades.
Steamboats.
Formats:
Autobiographies.
Ephemera.
Letters (correspondence)
Photograph albums.
Photographs.
Poems.
Reports.
Scrapbooks.
Names:
J. B. Pond Lyceum Bureau.
United States. Army. Wisconsin Cavalry Regiment, 3rd (1861-1865)
Quantrill, William Clarke, 1837-1865.
Ayscough, Florence Wheelock, 1878-1942.
Ball, Robert S. (Robert Stawell), 1840-1913.
Blair, Charles White, 1829-1899.
Bok, Edward William, 1863-1930.
Bullen, Frank Thomas, 1857-1915.
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909.
Ellsworth, William Webster, 1855-1936.
Feuchtwanger, Lion, 1884-1958.
Foss, Sam Walter, 1858-1911.
Gibbons, Herbert Adams, 1880-1934.
Hope, Anthony, 1863-1933.
Horn, Gunnar, 1894-1946.
Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920.
Lewin, Thomas Herbert, 1872-1964.
Maclaren, Ian, 1850-1907.
Parker, Joseph, 1830-1902.
Pond, James B. (James Burton), 1838-1903.
Pond, James B. (James Burton), 1889-1961.
Porter, Horace, 1837-1921.
Post, Augustus, 1873-1952.
Proctor, Mary, 1862-1957.
Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt, 1861-1933.
Schindler, Raymond Campbell, 1882-1959.
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton), 1841-1904.
Stuart-Houston, William Patrick, 1911-1987.
Stubbs, Charles William, 1845-1912.
Taylor, Rex, 1889-1968.
Trahan, Al.
Wallace, Edgar, 1875-1932.
Walter, Wilfred, 1882-1958.
Watson, John, 1850-1907.
Wolfe, Humbert, 1885-1940.
Zangwill, Israel, 1864-1926.
Baldwin, Evelyn Briggs, 1862-1933.
Beecher, Henry Ward, 1813-1887.
Bridgman, Edward Payson, 1834-
Browne, Maurice, 1881-1955.
Churchill, Winston, 1871-1947.
Davidson, James Wheeler, 1872-1933.
Dugmore, A. Radclyffe (Arthur Radclyffe), 1870-1955.
Franck, Harry Alverson, 1881-
Heller, Edmund, 1875-1939.
O'Rell, Max, 1848-1903.
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt), 1832-1902.
Winter, William, 1836-1917.
Places:
Baxter Springs (Kan.)
Illinois.
Kansas.
United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.
Wisconsin.
Buffalo (N.Y.)
Colorado Springs (Colo.)
England.
Germany.
Switzerland.
Washington (D.C.)
Winnipeg (Man.)

Contents

Using These Materials

Info for Visitors

How to Request

Ordering Reproductions

Download PDF Finding Aid
RESTRICTIONS:

The collection is open for research.

USE & PERMISSIONS:

Copyright status is unknown.

PREFERRED CITATION:

James B. Pond Papers, William L. Clements Library, The University of Michigan

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Collection

James B. Pond papers, 1863-ca. 1940s
Total components 15
Last indexed 2025-02-09