Author Archives: nancyleek

About nancyleek

Nancy is a retired librarian who lives in Chico, California. She is the author of John Bidwell: The Adventurous Life of a California Pioneer.

Early Photos of Bidwell Mansion

Posted on January 17, 2016 by nancyleek

The California State Library has several stereo views of Bidwell Mansion and Chico, designed to be viewed in a stereoscope. The photos depict right-eye and left-eye views of the same scene, and when viewed through the stereoscope appear three dimensional. … Continue reading →

Posted in Bidwell Mansion, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Bancroft’s “Literary Industries”

Posted on January 9, 2016 by nancyleek

When I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, back in the late ’60s, I was lucky enough to get a job as a student assistant in the Bancroft Library. Other student assistants fetched books from the stacks, … Continue reading →

Posted in Bancroft Library, H.H. Bancroft | 2 Comments

More on the Chinese in Butte County

Posted on January 7, 2016 by nancyleek

Liz Stewart of Chico Heritage Association alerted me to the website Butte County California Chinese Immigrants. This project is the work of Bill Jones, former Special Collections librarian at CSUChico, and Paul Johnson. The focus is on a collection of … Continue reading →

Posted in Chinese, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

A Bachelor’s Hope for Leap Year

Posted on January 3, 2016 by nancyleek

You may wrangle and rave of your Marysville girls, Of the girls of the Capital City, Of the ‘Frisco girls, with their fads and their curls, But the Butte Creek girls are most pretty. Their smiles are far dearer to … Continue reading →

Posted in Pres Longley, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Murder at Sutter’s Fort

Posted on December 30, 2015 by nancyleek

In the last post I published a letter from the Themis of December 21, 1889, in which John Bidwell writes “You ask if I can throw any light on the killing of “The White Horse?”” So, who or what was … Continue reading →

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Sutter’s Fort as John Bidwell Saw It

Posted on December 29, 2015 by nancyleek

The following letter appeared in the December 21, 1889 issue of Themis, a weekly compendium of political and cultural news published in Sacramento. The paper ran a series about early days at Sutter’s Fort, which drew this comment from General … Continue reading →

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Pres Longley’s Christmas Poem

Posted on December 24, 2015 by nancyleek

Pres Longley, the “Bard of Butte,” wrote many, many poems for the newspapers. This one appeared in the Oroville Daily Register on December 24th, 1908. A Poem for Christmas About two thousand years ago The Earth was filled with saddest … Continue reading →

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Who was the town of Nicolaus named for?

Posted on December 8, 2015 by nancyleek

If you are driving on Highway 99, you will see a sign pointing to the small town of Nicolaus. It is situated just to the east of the highway on the south side of the Feather River. In the days … Continue reading →

Posted in Nicolaus Allgeier, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Holiday Happenings

Posted on November 24, 2015 by nancyleek

I’ll get back to writing about northern California history soon, I promise. You might get tired of hearing about my new book, and we don’t want that. But here’s one more tidbit of book news: Yesterday I was interviewed by … Continue reading →

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John Bidwell, Jailbird

Posted on November 19, 2015 by nancyleek

John Bidwell spent November 16-18, 1841, in jail. He had gone to San Jose to get a passport, since John Marsh had neglected to get one for him. At the order of Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who wanted to know what … Continue reading →

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