Stories – Page 4 – C. E. Kelsey | Northern California Indian Association

Clifton Kroeber

It is thanks to a researcher, Clifton Kroeber, that I located C. E. Kelsey’s descendants and obtained these family photos.

Clif wrote to the National Archives at San Bruno in 2000, inquiring about Kelsey’s records as part of his research on Ishi. Even though I wrote back and told him that the archives did not have what he sought, Clif stayed in touch, writing to me occasionally using his typewriter and US mail. At some point he kindly shared with me copies of several letters written in the early 1960s by Kelsey’s wife and daughter to Theodora Kroeber, which he found among the Theodora Kroeber Papers at the Bancroft Library. Clif recognized that the address on the letters might be a lead to the whereabouts of C. E. Kelsey’s papers. However, what caught my eye was daughter Mary’s mention of her son–Kelsey’s grandson–attending grad school at Stanford University.

Knowing how well my alumni association keeps up with my movements, I figured the Stanford Alumni Association would be equally sharp tracking Mary’s son. So I wrote a letter to this son, added a stamped, unaddressed envelope, and sent them with a cover letter to the Stanford Alumni Association. I asked the association to read my letter to Mary’s son, and if they were comfortable with it, forward it to him in the stamped envelope.

It worked. About two weeks later, I received a reply to my letter. It came from Kelsey’s granddaughter rather than his grandson, but that was just fine by me. It was from them that I learned that Kelsey’s papers had not survived. All that remained were some photographs and notebooks.

I wrote this blog entry in 2010 for the archival repository where I worked. It is a small Kelsey story packaged in a Herbert Hoover frame, as required given my workplace:

“There it was, nested in a notebook between Miss Anna R. Elderkin in Coeur d’Alene and Miss Frances Hoyt of Los Angeles: “Herbert Hoover, 623 Mirada, Stanford University.” And I wasn’t even looking for it.

“Working at the Hoover Institution, I’m often amazed at the number of stories I hear from visitors about their connection to the Institution’s namesake. Although the story might be as simple as a dedication written by Herbert Hoover in a book found in their grandparent’s library, they all resonate to make this historical figure human. Looking at pages of this little notebook that listed not only names and addresses but ranch expenditures and the number of lemons picked in 1935, I realized I had stumbled across another such story.

“Few people understand that archivists don’t do research as part of their daily work; sometimes I do it at home after hours. Lately I’ve been studying a largely overlooked federal Indian agent named Kelsey who worked out of San Jose in the early 1900s. Although Kelsey and Hoover were contemporaries, Republicans, and lived just 15 miles apart, there was no reason that they would know one another.

“In pursuit of Kelsey’s seemingly lost papers, I tracked down his descendants, who shared with me scanned copies of his few surviving materials. The notebook was among them. When I found Hoover’s name, I went back to them for an explanation, and they told me their Hoover story: Hoover’s sister and Kelsey were neighbors, and when Hoover visited his sister, Kelsey’s young daughter liked to call to him, “Mistah Hoovah! See me t’un ovah!” while playing on her swing.

“Although the story is too inconsequential for a published biography, it’s the kind of anecdote that makes Hoover human, a brother, a neighbor. And I’m not sure whether it’s a Kelsey family story or now my own Hoover story.”