Watson, Douglas S. (Douglas Sloane)

Douglas Sloane Watson (1875-1948) was a writer and editor who specialized in California history. He published museum-quality reprints of early books and manuscripts as well as writing California histories and biographies which were privately printed for members of the Roxburghe Club of San Francisco and Book Club of California. Watson was also a frequent contributor to the California Historical Society Quarterly. He authored or edited a variety of published works including The Santa Fe Trail to California, 1849-1852: the journal and drawings of H.M.T. Powell (1931), The diary of Johann August Sutter (1932), The diary of Philip Leget Edwards: the great cattle drive from California to Oregon in 1837 (1932), Traits of American Indian life and character (co-authored with Peter Skene Ogden, 1933), West wind: the life story of Joseph Reddeford Walker, the Knight of the Golden Horseshoe (1934), California in the fifties: fifty views of cities and mining towns in California and the West (1936), and Drake's plate of brass: evidence of his visit to California in 1579 (1937).