The Wyles Collection Of Lincolniana

Jay Monaghan, Consultant for the Wyles Collection on the Santa Barbara Campus of the University of California, is the author of several books on Lincoln and the Civil War period. He is now preparing a biography of George Armstrong Custer, emphasizing that generaTs Civil War career rather than the widely known Last Stand on the Little Big Horn. The Wyles Collection Of Lincolniana JAY MONAGHAN the wyles collection of lincolniana at the University of California's Santa Barbara College is the oldest and largest collection on the Pacific Coast devoted exclusively to Lincoln and the Civil War. The collection was started by William Wyles, a Santa Barbara businessman. Bom in the Middle West in 1857, young Wyles was reared in the political turbulence of Reconstruction following the Civil War. Two of his uncles served in that war, and he remembered, years later, how as a little boy they once held him over a brook full of floating ice, threatening to duck him if he ever voted for the Democratic party. They considered all Democrats traitors. Whether or not this had any permanent effect on William Wyles's future life, one thing is certain. He insisted that books sympathetic to both sides of every political question be included in his Civil War library. As a young man Wyles showed as much interest in cowboys as he did in Lincoln. For a while he held a railroad office job in Chicago, but he quit it to go west, where he punched cows, herded sheep, and killed a buffalo. All his life he looked back with nostalgia on those range years, and in old age treasured a tintype of himself in chaps and spurs. In 1887 William Wyles moved to Santa Barbara for his health. He happened to be stopping at the San Marcos Hotel when the manager absconded . Wyles applied forhis job, andkept it for many years. Consistently investing part of his salary in real estate, he eventually owned a profitable walnut grove near Santa Barbara and an apartment house in Los Angeles. 383 384JAY MONAGHAN Some speculations in the China trade netted him more experience than cash —but he enjoyed the ocean voyages. In 1928William Wyles began the hobby of collecting books for his home. He was interested at that time in organized labor as well as the Civil War, and his studies of Terence V. Powderly and Samuel Gompers threatened temporarily to eclipse his interest in Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Wyles is credited with guiding him back to the Civil War and thus beginning the establishment of the great Wyles Collection. Her motive seems to have been entirelypersonal. Her husband was an excitable man, given to sudden outbursts of temper, and she felt than an interest in Lincoln would be better for his health than a constant perusal of labor's imbroglios. She died in 1938, but by that time her husband's collecting policy had become fixed. William Wyles's private collection soon outgrew the shelf room in his home. He talked this situation over with Dr. Clarence Phelps, who was then president of Santa Barbara State College. The two men came to an understanding: The college would supply a room for the collection, catalogue the books, and make them available to students; Wyles would continue buying important publications in the field—a tidy saving for the college budget. Professor of History William H. Ellison was designated to give himprofessional advice. Under this arrangement William Wyles regularly visited the library, where he was assigned a desk in the room set aside for his collection. Dealers ' catalogues were sent him here and he studied their pages eagerly, checking all the offerings. With advancing years the trip from Santa Barbara up the hill to the college became difficult, but he kept in constant touch by telephone—such constant touch that it sometimes tried the patience ofattendants employed there. Wyles now realized that he would not live forever, and he worried about the future of his collection. While in this uncertain state of mind he fell one day when coming out of a moving picture theater and broke his leg. (Western films always attracted him and he often sat through two or three...