Henry H. Clifford; Collector of Western Lore

Henry H. Clifford, collector of Western Americana who owned one of only two complete “Zamorano 80” collections of distinguished books on early California history, has died. He was 84.

Clifford died Feb. 21 in Pasadena, his family announced Tuesday.

A retired investment counselor who began his collecting with stamps when he was a child, Clifford completed the coveted book collection in 1988 after 35 painstaking years. The only other complete set is owned by the Frederick W. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Clifford stored his collection in a Los Angeles bank vault, making it available to interested parties on request. He believed that rare books given to a library get “buried with rare exception.”

The “Zamorano 80” list was compiled in 1945 by the Los Angeles-based bibliophiles’ Zamorano Club. The list and the club were named for Juan Vicente Zamorano, who in the early 19th Century became California’s first printer.

The most valuable book in the collection of 18th- and 19th-Century volumes is considered to be “The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit,” written in 1854 by John Rollin Ridge, son of a Cherokee chief.

Clifford bought the rare volume nearly two decades ago from a private owner in Maine, assuring that he could complete his Zamorano list.

He completed the list in early 1988 with the $42,000 purchase of two volumes from the fabled Estelle Doheny book collection--a 1770 book by explorer Miguel Costanso on the first land expedition into California and an 1831 work by Mexican government official Carlos Antonio Carrillo about strengthening California defenses.

Books were not the only thing collected by the Pasadena investor. He moved from stamps to western express covers (envelopes), Gold Rush era coins, Native American costumes and such memorabilia as miners’ scales, a Wells Fargo strongbox and the stagecoach guard’s shotgun.

“I probably should have been a museum curator,” Clifford told The Times in 1988.

His interest in Western history led him into the historic riding clubs Rancheros Visitadores, Los Caballeros and Westerners, along with the more traditional Valley Hunt Club, Zamorano Club and the California Club. He was also president of the California Historical Society.

“You never know,” he said of stamp collecting in 1960, “where a hobby like this will take you.”

Born in St. Louis, Clifford spent most of his life in Pasadena. As a student at Yale, he helped found the singing group “Eight Sons of Eli.”

With time out to serve in the Navy during World War II, Clifford worked half a century for his family investment firm, now Clifford Associates in Pasadena, retiring in 1983.

Clifford is survived by his wife of 60 years, Lucetta Andrews Clifford; a daughter, Sally Smith of Sacramento; a son, Tony Clifford of Pasadena, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.