Carl Irving Wheat correspondence

California historian and lawyer Carl Irving Wheat (1892-1966) was born in Holliston, Massachusetts on December 5, 1892. Wheat graduated from Pomona College in 1915 and Harvard Law School in 1920. He joined the legal staff of the Railroad Commission of California in 1922 and started private practice in 1929 in Los Angeles. Wheat was involved with the Historical Society of Southern California and became the chairman of its publication committee, frequently contributing his own publications. His most significant work was Mapping the Transmississippi West, 1540-1861 in five volumes. In 1950, Wheat was elected to the American Antiquarian Society. In 1959, he was named a fellow of the California Historical Society and was awarded the Henry R. Wagner Memorial Medal.

Hu Shih was born in Shanghai, China on December 17, 1891. He was a Chinese diplomat, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, and politician. In August 1910, Hu Shih was sent to study agriculture at Cornell University. In 1912, he changed his major to philosophy and literature. After receiving his undergraduate degree, he went on to study philosophy at Teachers College, Columbia University. He returned to China to lecture at Peking University. Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism. He was influential in the May Fourth Movement, one of the leaders of China’s New Cultural Movement, was a president of Peking University, and in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature. He served as ambassador of Republic of China to the United States between 1938 and 1942.