SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA METHODIST EPISCOPAL ANNUAL CONFERENCE: Eleventh Session. Convening at San Diego, Cal., September 16th, 1886. Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D. L.L.D. Presiding.
San Diego: Ferguson & Bumgardner, 1886. Small program, printed on both sides of an 11" x 7 3/4" sheet of white stock that is folded in half (4 panels). Faint smudging to one of the inner panels, with two light horizontal creases and some general toning along the extremities. Scarce, OCLC locates no holdings.
1886 was the first year San Diego hosted the annual meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church's Southern California Conference, and this program detailing the exercises and the "entertainment" of visiting delegates was one of the first products of the San Diego job printing firm of Ferguson & Bumgardner, established earlier that year. Among the delegates listed are Marion M. Bovard, the first president of the University of Southern California, who preached on "Ministerial Education" on the second day; Adam Bland, the first Methodist minister in Los Angeles, sent as a missionary in 1853; and R.W.C. Farnsworth, presiding elder of the Los Angeles District, known to historians and bibliophiles as editor of A Southern California Paradise: Being a Historic and Descriptive Account of Pasadena, San Gabriel, Sierra Madre, and La Canada (1883). The Los Angeles real estate boom was in full swing, and ministers' reports at the conference reflected that fact - as the San Diego Sun wrote, "All reported prosperous circumstances attending their labors, and nearly all responded that the collection of funds for the year exceeded largely the apportionment."
Ferguson & Bumgardner was one of four job printing houses in San Diegoin 1886, along with the San Diego Union Publishing Co., F.M. Dalamazzo, and Gould & Hutton. Ben C. Ferguson left the firm in 1888, and Forrest Bumgardner retired in 1891, leaving partner Eugene Frandzen who continued under the name of Frandzen, Bumgardner & Co. until his death in 1900. The firm specialized in government printing, regularly doing business with the city and county of San Diego and other local governments as far north as Madera County. Item #80001
Price: $100.00