Good-bye Chaffey, Hello Frankish

After
months of creating metadata for the Chaffey brothers, I am finally done
uploading the Chaffey letters to the digital library! This is an exciting moment
because now researchers can access all of the letters in our collection online.
I have written blog posts before about the various historical narratives that
can be gleaned from these narratives, and I hope others find that to be true
the next time they visit the Claremont Colleges Digital Library. It seems odd
that I have read almost every Chaffey letter in our collection and now I am
done. There are no more Chaffey letters left for me to read.

Now I turn
to Charles Frankish and the large collection of letters from him that we have
in our collection. After the Chaffey brothers established Ontario, California
they moved to Australia to start a new colony based on the success of the
Ontario colony. They left Ontario in the hands of Charles Frankish who
continued to develop the city. Creating metadata for Charles Frankish is much
easier given the context I have from the Chaffey brothers’ letters. Charles
Frankish had to respond to many of the same issues that the Chaffey brothers
dealt with. However, new plans were also being made as the city grew rapidly.

For
example, several letters from 1887 refer to an electric railway being
constructed along an eight-mile strip of Euclid Avenue. It’s fascinating to
read the letters in chronological order because I feel like I am watching a
city being built. It’s even more interesting because I have been to Ontario,
and can think back to what changes the city has gone through to get from the
small settlement founded by the Chaffeys and developed by Charles Frankish to
the modern city we can visit today.

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