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Adam Ludewig, an Alpena, Michigan, bookseller's clerk in his early 20s, recorded information about his activities, interactions, and the weather in this pre-printed daily Excelsior diary. He provided very brief notes on his work in the store; documentation of church and Sunday school attendance; remarks on letters, notes, and visits by young women; the books he read; painting lessons; and other subjects. He frequently abbreviated names and other words, occasionally wrote sentences with old German script, and sometimes encoded words with pigpen cyphers.

Adam Ludewig, an Alpena, Michigan, bookseller's clerk in his early 20s, recorded information about his activities, interactions, and the weather in this pre-printed daily Excelsior diary. He provided very brief notes on his work in the store ("All well / Busy in Store"); documentation of church and Sunday school attendance; and mentions of letters, notes, and visits by young women—with occasional afterthoughts such as "poor girl is to have a tooth pulled this morning" or "I do not know what to do. Time will be my best support." He noted the books he read, from "Titcomb's Letters to Young People, Single and Married" to Goethe's "The Sorrow of Young Werther." He painted and studied French. Ludewig frequently abbreviated names and other words, occasionally wrote sentences with old German script, and sometimes encoded words with pigpen cyphers. Seven small pen and ink drawings are scattered within the volume.

Civic and other organizational work mentioned in the diary include financial support for the German Aid Society and the Arbeiterverein, and attendance at evening Masonic Lodge meetings (identified in the diary only as drawings of oblong squares in quotation marks). He became Secretary and noted that he paid $1.00 for life insurance from the Masons (for $1,500 coverage).

This collection contains documents, correspondence, and a journal related to German immigrant Carl Gallwitz and to the Mathes family, Alsatian immigrants who were later related to the Gallwitz family by marriage. Included are German-language documents from the early 19th century as well as a journal that Carl Gallwitz kept while traveling to and around the United States in the 1820s.

This collection contains 9 documents, 2 letters, and a journal related to German immigrant Carl Christ Wilhelm Gallwitz and to the Mathes family, Alsatian immigrants who were later related to the Gallwitz family by marriage.

The first 5 items, all in German, are 3 baptism certificates, a printed poem about baptism, and a document. The poem is surrounded by a colored printed floral border, and the document is written on a sheet with a colored illustration of two birds in a floral setting. Other documents are a naturalization certificate for Martin Mathers [sic], issued in Wooster, Ohio (April 2, 1855), and a German and French document from the 1860s certifying the 1833 birth of George Mathes to Martin Mathes and Marguerite Rott of the Alsatian town of Wissembourg.

Correspondence includes a German letter from Martin Mathes, Jr., to his father (July 19, 1850) and a letter signed by several men in Coloma, California, about the death of Martin Mathes, Jr., and funeral costs (December 8, 1850). A manuscript poem in German and an illustration of the Sun are undated.

Carl Christ Wilhelm Gallwitz kept a journal (459 pages) between March 22, 1820, and January 1832. He documented his travels in Europe and in the United States, as well as his life in Ohio. Gallwitz wrote brief entries almost daily between 1820 and 1822, and less frequently through January 1832. Gallwitz occasionally drew illustrations, including a kite's stringing system (July 1, 1820, p. 68), various types of fish (July 4, 1820, pp. 71-73), a "May apple" plant (August 6, 1820, p. 94), and an unidentified mammal (19 August, 1820, p. 99). The journal includes a list of cities that Gallwitz visited while traveling between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New Orleans, Louisiana (pp. 270-271), as well as several pages of watercolor and ink manuscript maps of his traveling route, usually made on riverboats (pp. 273-299). A translated copy of the journal and Gallwitz's itinerary are housed with the collection.

The journal also includes a colorful illustration of a man painting the portrait of a woman in an interior setting, featuring details such as a patterned rug, a side table with teacups, and paintings hung on the wall (p. 486). Two additional illustrations depict store signs for "L. Weeman & Comp. Store" and "1823. L. Ewing's Office" (p. 491). The inside of the back cover bears a pencil sketch of three figures at the base of a bluff.