Collection context
Summary
- Title:
- Postmark collection
- Dates:
- 1922-1971,, bulk 1922-1952
- Creators:
- Sawyer, Preston
- Abstract:
- This small collection contains post cards with special day stamps, place stamps, and opening & closing day stamps collected by Preston Sawyer.
- Extent:
- 2 boxes, 207 cards
- Language:
- Languages represented in the collection: English
- Preferred citation:
-
Postmark collection. MS 284. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Background
- Scope and content:
-
This small collection contains post cards with special day stamps, place stamps, and opening & closing day stamps collected by Preston Sawyer.
- Biographical / historical:
-
Preston Sawyer, collector, proofreader and historical writer, was born in Santa Cruz on December 6, 1899. He was a life-long bachelor who lived with his brother Ariel, also a bachelor, who ran the Sawyer Tile Company. As a youth, Preston Sawyer worked as a movie extra in the very early movie industry located in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A prolific amateur photographer, he snapped hundreds of pictures of the movie stars and the sets while waiting for work. In addition to taking his own, including, for example, a series of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, taken from a 16 year old's point of view, he also collected pictures covering early Santa Cruz and the surrounding areas.
In 1935 he was hired at the Santa Cruz Sentinel as a proofreader, a job he held for almost three decades, except for a stint in the Army during World War II. In 1948, he began a weekly feature "Santa Cruz Yesterdays" which appeared in the Sunday Sentinel. The articles were based on his extensive collection of photographs and reference materials, many culled from local second-hand shops he visited on his lunch hours. By 1955, approximately 364 historical picture-stories had been printed. Sawyer retired from the Sentinel in 1962.
Sawyer was also a stamp collector and over the years amassed a large collection of first day postal stamps and last day postal stamps with cancellations of every single post office in California. He collected postcards depicting just about anything from anywhere he went, including ones with cancellations which when put together would make a sentence. He also made sure he had postmarks from Preston, Alabama and Sawyer, Michigan.
In the late 1960s Sawyer's treasure trove of Santa Cruz and California history, collected over the course of his life, was purchased by and split between the Santa Cruz Public Library and the University Library at UCSC. The reference materials and books went to the Public Library while the University received the postal collections and correspondence, as well as photographs, glass plate and film negatives, and films.
Preston Sawyer died in October of 1968 in a rest home in Watsonville, after a five year illness.
- Acquisition information:
- Purchase from R. Ariel Sawyer, 1964
- Arrangement:
-
The cards are arranged by year.
- Physical location:
- Stored in Special Collections & Archives: Advance notice is required for access to the papers.
- Rules or conventions:
- Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard
Indexed terms
About this collection guide
- Date Prepared:
- © 2013
- Date Encoded:
- Machine-readable finding aid created by M. Carey. Machine-readable finding aid derived from MS Word. Date of source: October 17, 2013.
Access and use
- Restrictions:
-
Collection open for research.
- Terms of access:
-
Property rights reside with the University of California. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to publish or to reproduce the material, please contact the Head of Special Collections and Archives.
- Preferred citation:
-
Postmark collection. MS 284. Special Collections and Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz.
- Location of this collection:
-
Special Collections and Archives, University Library1156 High StreetSanta Cruz, CA 95064, US
- Contact:
- (831) 459-2547