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Ann Arbor, Michigan businessman and surveyor general of the Dakota Territory; correspondence and business papers.

The George D. Hill papers consists of correspondence and financial papers relating to his Ann Arbor business interests and to his service as surveyor general of the Dakota Territory in the 1860s. Some of the additional topics covered in the collection include the Free Homestead Association of Central New York, lumbering activities (1854-1857), the Michigan militia (1858-1861), the removal of President Henry P. Tappan from University of Michigan, and Hill's role in Republican Party politics (1856-1857). Hill numbered among his correspondents Cyrus Aldrich, Henry J. Alvord, Moses K. Armstrong, Kinsley S. Bingham, Philemon Bliss, W. W. Brookings, Walter A. Burleigh, Zachariah Chandler, Frederick W. Curtenius, Mark W. Delahay, Charles H. Dennison, James M. Edmunds, Newton Edmunds, Alpheus Felch, James S. Foster, Orrin N. Giddings, Bradley F. Granger, William Jayne, Whitney Jones, Francis R. Stebbins, Henry P. Tappan, T. J. Townsend, Jerome M. Treadwell, Seymour B. Treadwell, and Benjamin F. Wade.

Orchard Lake, Michigan, family, with various business interests, including lumbering and land transactions (in Michigan, California, West Virginia, and British Columbia), and also active in the development of the Orchard Lake area, especially from the 1920s to the 1940s; Correspondence files of individual family members, subject files detailing family interests and activities, business and legal records, maps, blueprints, and photographs.

The majority of the Ward Family collection is comprised of materials generated by Willis Ward and his son, Harold, and thus reflect the life of the family in the twentieth century. The strengths of the collection rest on materials which document upper-class family life in the first three decades of this century; the development of the Orchard Lake area in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s; the extensive Michigan land holdings of the Ward family; and the history of the lumber town of Deward, Michigan. The researcher should be aware that there are only limited materials in the collection which document either David Ward's business pursuits in Michigan or his personal life. The researcher should supplement those materials with use of Ward's published autobiography.

There are six series which comprise the Ward collection: Personal; Correspondence; Land Holdings; Photographs; Architectural Drawings; and Maps. Whenever possible the original order of materials in the first three series has been maintained.