Free to good home!  Watson Ambruster Collection, 1839-1935:  a collection of newspapers and newspaper clippings which belonged to Watson Ambruster, managing editor of The Daily Evening Telegraph (Philadelphia), 1866-1904.  Currently, the collection (housed in a black metal storage box approximately 20”L x 13 ¾” x 11”H) contains assorted editorial clippings by Ambruster from 1893 through 1903 and two old clothbound envelope boxes of assorted news clippings from various newspapers collected by Ambruster, and a published last letter from a World War I officer.  The condition of the collection is fair to poor.

 

I’m not sure if there is any significance to the collection and it doesn’t seem as if it would be useful to researchers.  The collection would need quite a bit of work since it is all newspaper clippings which are not identified other than the title of the articles.  I don’t know if the articles he saved were his own or just topics of interest to him.  They have been neatly placed in envelops, some of which are marked with a topic or a date.  More than half of the original donation seems to be missing (no one seems to know what happened to it over the years).  It’s quite possible that it was thrown away since the original inventory marked the missing items as being in poor condition.

 

I can’t find any reason why it should be in our collection or why it should be kept by anyone.  The collection was acquired from the daughter of Mr. Ambruster in 1961 by the club president (who was not an archivist) and was inventoried in 1981 by our archivist/librarian at the time. 

 

 

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Christina J. Zamon

Archivist

National Press Club Archives

529 14th Street, NW

Suite 480

Washington, DC  20045

202-662-7598

http://www.press.org/library06/archives.cfm

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