Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

The Michigan Conference of the United Church of Christ was formed from the merger of the Michigan Conference of the Congregational Church and the Michigan-Indiana Synod of the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The record group includes retired records of individual associations, conferences, and local churches. Also included are files on churches and pastors within the Conference.

This record group is comprised primarily of records of the associations and conferences that make up the United Church of Christ Michigan Conference. The records document the mergers between smaller conferences to make the larger ones of today. These records are largely made up of correspondence, minutes, agendas, conference materials, and programming information.

Besides records of the individual associations and conferences, the collection also contains an extensive amount of records from individual churches, which can be found in the "Records from individual churches" and the "Church files" series. Because their relationship to each other is unknown, these series were not combined. The "Church files" series are records that may have been stored by the Michigan Conference rather than the individual churches. The "Records from individual churches" concerns materials that belonged to the individual churches. Whether these churches belonged to the smaller associations that make up the Michigan Conference is unknown. Therefore, they were kept separate. More information on these series can be found in the individual series' description below.

The record group has been arranged into the following series: Michigan Conference; Associations and conferences; Woman's Home Missionary Union and related; Records from individual churches; Annual Meetings of Michigan Congregational Conference and of the United Church of Christ; Evangelical and Reformed Church; Church files; Photographs; Ministerial files; and Student ministry.

Student-controlled bookstore at the University of Michigan (established 1970, ceased operation in 1987.) Minutes and memoranda of board of directors, financial records, labor negotiation files, and other subject files; and photographs.

The records of the University Cellar have been arranged into three series: History and background; Administrative records; and Former employees files. The bulk of the records concerns the administration of University Cellar with extensive documentation of its financial operations and labor negotiations with the Industrial Workers of the World. Included are board of directors minutes and minutes of the Store, Retail, and Operations Councils.

Local historical society for Washtenaw County, Michigan Organizational records and collected historical materials.

The Washtenaw County Historical Society records include collected historical documents and photographs relating to the people, events, and history of the county, its cities and townships. There are also administrative records of the organization, including minutes of meetings, subjects relating to Society programs and projects, and financial miscellanea.

Gerontologist, faculty member at the University of Michigan, first with the Bureau of Psychological Services, later with the Institute for Human Adjustment, and as co-director of its successor unit, the Institute of Gerontology. Files detailing her participation at various meetings and conferences, her other professional activities and affiliations, research projects files, University of Michigan administrative and teaching materials, and videotapes of presentations at 1979 conference, "White House Conferences as Agents of Social Change", also photographs.

The Wilma T. Donahue papers document her career as a teacher, researcher, and administrator at the University of Michigan. The papers span the years 1945-1990 with the bulk of the material falling within the two decades bound by 1949-1969. The Donahue papers are a subset of the Michigan Historical Collections/Institute of Gerontology Joint Archives in Gerontology and can best be understood as an integral element of that larger set.

The Donahue papers provide a clear insight to the development of the field of gerontology as an academic discipline and as an area of concern for policy makers and the general public. The earliest files reflect Donahue's training as a psychologist as it relates to her research on testing, returning veterans, and the blind. In the late 1940s Donahue and Clark Tibbitts began to research and publish articles on the aging population in America. Donahue's papers reflect this new interest as the focus of her writings now turns to issues of aging: housing, mental and physical health, adult education, and the economics of retirement. These issues dominated Donahue's research for twenty years and her papers document her increasing stature as an influential figure in gerontology at the state and national levels, especially her involvement with the University of Michigan Annual Conferences on Gerontology, the Michigan Commission on Aging, and her "cutting edge" research on housing the aging.

The collection came to the library in different accessions and from different sources. Although there is some overlap, the files as received represent distinct series. These series are Articles, Conferences, Addresses and Meetings, 1949-1970; Professional Activities and Affiliations, 1953-1970; Research Projects, 1955-1971; University of Michigan: Administration and Teaching, 1946-1968; Videotapes: White House Conferences as Agents of Social Change, 1979; International Center for Social Gerontology; and Miscellaneous.