John and Esther Shipp Collection
![*Click on image for content.: MS 17 - ff 28/30: Poetry and Prose by Esther Shipp [January - March, 1933]](https://d8e7jbdw4fu0e.cloudfront.net/4452/309c5c10-d6df-11f0-abbd-d1179f72e695-v7TMvRn.lg@2x.jpg)
*Click on image for content.
MS 17 - ff 28/30: Poetry and Prose by Esther Shipp [January - March, 1933]
![*Click on image for content.: MS 17 - ff 28/30: Poetry and Prose by Esther Shipp [January - March, 1933]](https://d3f1jyudfg58oi.cloudfront.net/4452/image/309c5c10-d6df-11f0-abbd-d1179f72e695-v570ejK.tn@2x.jpg)
Name/Title
John and Esther Shipp CollectionEntry/Object ID
MS.17Scope and Content
John and Esther Shipp came to Boulder City in August 1941, when Esther began working for the Lake Mead Seismological Party of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and John for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Both were deeply involved in Boulder City's clubs and organizations, including the Rebekahs, Girl Scouts, and Odd Fellows. Esther began writing for the Boulder City News in 1949, and her features, profiles, and column, Here and There, in which she tracked the birthdays, anniversaries, and personal anecdotes of Boulder citizens, were a staple of the News for nearly 40 years. John retired from the Bureau of Reclamation in 1968 and then worked briefly at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, printing plant. In 1976, John ran unsuccessfully for the Nevada State Senate, and in February 1977 was appointed Constable of Nelson [now Boulder] Township upon the death of Perlie Morris. Shipp was subsequently re-elected and served as Constable for 10 years. Among the materials in the collection are a copy of a journal Esther Shipp kept when the family first arrived in Boulder City, and the photographs and biography files she used in her stories for the Boulder City News. The evolution of the John and Esther Shipp collection of biography files is fascinating: The collection was gathered initially by Laura Bell, a writer and historian who worked as the Boulder City/Henderson stringer for the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Review-Journal newspapers in the 1940s and '50s, as well as for both the Henderson Home News and the Boulder City News. Bell tracked the social lives of these two communities, including births, deaths, engagements and marriages, anniversaries, vacations, graduations, reunions, retirements, and other notable news about the people of Boulder City and Henderson. Esther Shipp inherited the files from Laura Bell in the 1950s and significantly expanded the original collection throughout the 1960s and '70s. In the 1980s, when Esther retired from her column, she turned the collection over to Boulder City News reporter Virginia "Teddy" Fenton, who used the information gathered there to produce lengthy feature articles and obituaries about local families and individuals. The biography files in the Shipp collection cover the years 1946 through 1979, with some clippings collected from the 1980s. All the files have been added to the museum's biography collection, and an inventory of the Shipp material is stored with the Shipp manuscript collection, along with the date book Esther used to track births and anniversaries. Photographs removed from the clipping files are stored in the John and Esther Shipp Photograph Collection. * * *Collection
ManuscriptsCategory
Support Level