Neal Harlow; Librarian Wrote About California History

Neal Harlow, a distinguished librarian, historian and author who published five volumes on the history of California that are greatly prized by collectors and archivists, has died at the age of 92.

Harlow died July 13 at his home in Los Angeles, spokesmen for the Historical Society of Southern California said Wednesday.

The society named Harlow as one of its fellows in 1989 in recognition of his lifetime work. At that time, Executive Director Thomas F. Andrews cited Harlow’s 1982 book, “California Conquered: War and Peace on the Pacific, 1846-1850,” in particular as “the most complete, balanced and readable account of the conquest yet published in a single volume.”

Harlow’s other books were “The City of the Angels and the City of the Saints,” published by the Huntington Library in 1978, and a trilogy of books of maps that spanned four decades, beginning with what was his master’s thesis at UC Berkeley, “The Maps of San Francisco Bay From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation” in 1950. The subsequent two were “Maps and Surveys of the Pueblo Lands of Los Angeles” in 1976 and “Maps of the Pueblo Lands of San Diego, 1602-1874” in 1987.

A San Diego reviewer called Harlow’s final work “a handsome book, the sort you pick up for a glance and are still reading an hour later.”

The press run for each of the tomes numbered in the low hundreds, and the most recent cost $150.

Harlow ferreted out maps and references for his works in the musty, far-flung stacks of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, the Huntington Library in San Marino, the National Archives in Washington and various archives in Seville, Spain.

For each of California’s coastal cities, Harlow introduced the maps with succinct histories of the areas, which at least one reviewer considered “welcome reading for anyone mildly interested in a city’s beginnings.”

History, Harlow once wrote, is “no job for a tyro,” but by the time he turned to his notes and typewriter, Harlow was definitely no beginner.

He was born in Columbus, Ind., and while he was growing up his family kept moving west, pausing in Shelby, Neb., Pueblo, Colo., and eventually Stockton. He studied at Cal State Fresno, Santa Ana Junior College and UCLA, where he earned a teaching degree.

Along the way, he apprenticed in a pharmacy, picked fruit, cut meat, painted signs and played in a jazz band. Then he decided to become a librarian.

Harlow was a good one--working for 35 years in respected libraries and library education programs after earning his certificate in 1933 (and later a master’s degree in library science) at UC Berkeley.

He started in 1934 as a junior librarian in Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, where he first became intrigued with historical maps, and retired in 1969 as dean of the Rutgers University Graduate School of Library Service in New Brunswick, N.J.

In between, he headed the California section of the California State Library in Sacramento and the special collections at UCLA’s Powell Library, and he spent a decade as the top librarian of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

He was also highly active in librarians’ organizations, including serving as president of the Canadian Library Assn. and the Assn. of College and Research Libraries, and as a council member of the American Library Assn.

But when he returned to Los Angeles to “retire,” Harlow segued quickly into doing the research and writing he had guided, assisted and taught others to do for nearly four decades. He also became more active in two of the top organizations of book aficionados, the Rounce and Coffin Club and the Zamorano Club.

“A historian,” Harlow once wrote of his second profession, “does not make up his characters and action, but re-creates them from whatever believable sources are available and from his own insights into human character and motivation.”

“History is no less remarkable than fiction,” he said, “and it can be more poignant and appealing to readers because these people, engaged in these activities and consequences, actually lived.”

Harlow spiced his books with anecdotes of those people--such as the 1830 settler Henry Delano Fitch, who scandalized San Diego when he eloped with young Josefa Carrillo, and Lt. George H. Derby, the Army engineer who made a survey to turn the flow of the San Diego River from San Diego Bay into low-lying land then known as False Bay. When his proposal found support more than a century later, the resulting artificial body of water became Mission Bay, the home of the Sea World theme park.

Harlow’s wife, Marian, died in 1989. He is survived by two daughters, Diane and Nora, and a sister, Mary.

The family has asked that memorial donations be made to the Historical Society of Southern California, 200 E. Avenue 43, Los Angeles, CA 90031.