Collections : [University of Michigan William L. Clements Library]

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1 volume

This collection consists one bound volume including both financial receipts and sketches. The first part the volume contains 38 pages of receipts of payments from John Sunnocks to various people he had transacted business with in the late 18th century. The rest of the volume contains sketches circa 1880, attributed to Newbold Hough Trotter, an American artist known for his work illustrating natural landscapes and animals.

This single bound volume includes both financial receipts and sketches. The first part the volume contains 38 pages of receipts of payments from John Sunnocks to various people he transacted business with in late 18th century Philadelphia. The next approximately 150 pages contain sketches attributed to Newbold Hough Trotter, an American artist known for his work illustrating natural landscapes and animals. The second half of the volume is unused.

It is likely Newbold came into possession of the book through his wife, Ann Trotter. Ann's great-grandfather, William Dawson, was named executor of John Sunnock's estate at the time of his death in 1793. This is noted in some of the last receipts in the volume.

The receipts date from June 20, 1792 to January 31, 1801 and are written by the individual receiving the payment or by John Sunnocks, or someone on behalf of John Sunnocks, and signed by the individual receiving payment. The currency shifts between pounds and dollars, and some receipts are exchanges of said currencies. The receipts vary in specificity. Many relate to his business as a trunk maker, for goods and services such as animal skins, lumber, and freight. Other expenses shown are taxes, rent, and military fines. Some of the more recurring businesses and individuals found in these receipts are as follows: Moses Levy (attorney), John Field & Son (merchants), Andrew Tybout (merchant), Roberts & Twamley (ironmongers), Abbot & Barnes (curriers), David Moffat (sea captain), Daniel Drinker (merchant), and William Watson (sea captain).

The sketches are in pencil and undated. They mostly depict animals, including many images of lions. Other drawings/scenes include profile portraits of men and women, a man hunting, a ship at sea, and a man presenting artwork. A few drawings appear to have been done by a child.

26 watercolors in 1 volume

Lake Superior Scenery consists of 26 watercolor sketches produced by artist Albert L. Rawson during a steamboat tour of the Great Lakes (primarily Lake Superior) in 1865. The sketches were compiled into a presentation album gifted to Louise C. Ely, a fellow traveler befriended by Rawson during the tour.

Lake Superior Scenery consists of 26 watercolor sketches produced by artist Albert L. Rawson during a steamboat tour of the Great Lakes (primarily Lake Superior) in 1865. The sketches were compiled into a presentation album gifted to Louise C. Ely, a fellow traveler befriended by Rawson during the tour.

The album (27 x 35.5 cm) has full pebbled burgundy Morocco leather covers replete with gilt decoration and blind-stamped ornamentations. The words “Presented to Mrs. Louise C. Ely By ***** ***** A Lake Superior friend,” “Album,” and “Lake Superior Scenery” are gold stamped on the front cover, spine, and back cover respectively. The binder’s ticket of “Dean Smeal & Hoffman Blank Book Manufacturers and Book Binders 148 Lake Street up stairs, Chicago” appears on the inside of the front cover, likely indicating that Rawson traveled through Chicago at some point during the 1865 steamboat tour. A calling card of “Mrs. C. Arthur Ely” is also tipped-in and includes an inscription reading “Elyria, Lake Superior Views in Water Colors.”

The album begins with an inscribed title reading “Lake Superior Scenery. Sketches by: A. L. Rawson. 1865.” Beneath the title inscription there is also a handwritten table of contents that reads:
  • No. 1 Grand Portal Pictured Rocks.
  • 2 Grand Portal, Interior.
  • 3 Miners Castle.
  • 4 Cascade.
  • 5 Cliff, where Steamer Superior was wrecked 1859.
  • 6 Sail Rock and Profile.
  • 7 Wrecker’s Hut.
  • 8 Stranded Fleet.
  • 9 Carp River. Near Marquette.
  • 10 Cascade near Miner’s Castle.
  • 11 [blank] (untitled scene showing railroad tracks, a train with smoke billowing, a river, and a colorful sky)
  • 12 Lake Michigumi. Round Islands.
  • 13 Chapel. From the Water.
  • 14 Chapel and Fall, East.
  • 15 Dead River, near White’s Burnt Mill.
  • 16 Grand Island Harbor.
  • 17 Superior Iron Mine.
  • 18 In the Woods near Chocolat.
  • 19 Fort Mackinac.
  • 20 Washington Harbor - Lake Michigan.
  • 21 Lake Michigami.
  • 22 Marquette from Chocolat.
  • 23 Marquette from the Water.
  • 24 Picnic Point, near Presque Isle.
  • 25 View near Marquette. Partridge Isle, Picnic Point Presque Isle and grand Island in the distance.
  • 26 Chapel, West.

The table of contents accurately lists the relative position of each watercolor within the album except for the first two items (“Grand Portal Pictured Rocks” appears to be located on pg. 2 while “Grand Portal, Interior” is located on pg. 1).

Items of particular interest include:
  • Eight views depicting various formations of The Pictured Rocks such as the Grand Portal, Miners Castle, Sail Rock, Stranded Fleet, and the Chapel.
  • The view titled “The Wrecker’s Hut” (No. 7) showing a man sat near a birch-bark hut erected on Chapel Beach close to the site where the steamer Superior was wrecked in 1856. The view titled “Cliff where Steamer Superior was wrecked 1859” (No. 5) appears to have gotten the year of the wreck wrong.
  • The view titled “Cascade Near Miner’s Castle” (No. 10) showing the steamboat Comet (built 1857 as a cargo vessel before being converted to hold passengers; she sank in 1875 while carrying seventy tons of Montana silver ore, making her the one and only treasure ship of Lake Superior)
  • Several views of scenes near Marquette, Grand Island, and Lake Michigamme.
  • The view titled “Superior Iron Mine” (No. 17) showing a group of miners at work with sledgehammers and horse-drawn carts.
  • The view titled “Washington Harbor, Lake Michigan” (No. 20) showing a docked steamer at Washington Island, Wisconsin.

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11 pages of watercolors housed in soft cover sketchbook from ca. 1830 drawn by Master William Carr of the Royal Navy. Watercolors depict topographic views of islands and shorelines in the Atlantic Ocean. Almost all views are of rocky island outlines. A few sketches have man-made structures in the scene.

The collection is made up of a soft cover sketchbook containing 11 pages of watercolor topographic views of islands and shorelines in the Atlantic Ocean. Almost all views are of rocky island outlines. A few sketches have man-made structures in the scene. Most sketches have headings for the page and then descriptive sentences about the various views. Cover of sketchbook reads "Landmarks N & S Atlantic by Mr. Wm Carr, Master R.N." Written on the back cover of sketchbook is the London address of a Capt. B.C. Doyle. On the back of two pages are small pencil sketches: one sketch on the back of Page 10 is of a chronometer or watch and the other sketch on the back of Page 11 is of a ship moored in "springs." The last few pages of the journal contain recordings of the latitude and longitude of various places, presumably visited by William Carr while in the service of the Royal Navy.

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An album of pressed flowers collected by Lily Frémont in 1859.

The Lily Frémont fllower album is an album of pressed flowers and drawings made by Elizabeth Benton (Lily) Frémont (1842-1919). The album has a brown leather cover with "Album" written in gilt lettering. Frémont made the album in 1859 when her family was living in California at their estate in Mariposa and their home on San Francisco Bay. The first two pages of the album hold drawings, one of a small house surrounded by trees with a large hill behind it, possibly the Frémont home in Mariposa, the other showing a small group of buildings and a smokestack below a large hill, possible a silver mine. The rest of album contains pressed flowers and plants, each is numbered with a written description. Frémont provides the names to some flowers though many are unidentified. She also gives the date and location where each flower was found, and often describes its soil conditions, growing patterns, seasonality, color and odor. There are 80 total specimens in the album.

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The Louis Miller WWI exhibit materials collection is comprised of visual materials and realia displayed in an exhibit to mark the centennial of the Armistice in the autumn of 2018. The bulk of the materials pertain to the American Expeditionary Forces in the First World War.

The Louis Miller WWI exhibit materials collection contains visual materials and realia displayed in an exhibit to mark the centennial of the Armistice in the autumn of 2018. The bulk of the materials pertain to the American Expeditionary Forces in the First World War.

The largest part of the collection is postcards and ephemera belonging to Ole Reppe, a Wisconsin soldier who served in the 32nd Division. There are fifty-six postcards, four typewritten pages, and one ticket stub. The postcards date from 1917-1919, and follow Reppe's service in the Wisconsin National Guard and American Expeditionary Forces.

Eight postcards show scenes from Camp Douglas, Wisconsin. Two of these have inscriptions written by Reppe from August 1917 that describe the images. Two more date from 1920, with messages from his future wife Clara, and his mother. Both of these are written in Norwegian. Two postcards depict Janesville, Wisconsin.

Thirteen postcards show military training at an unidentified location. Six postcards date from Reppe's time in Texas in 1917, including a real photo postcard of an unidentified couple with a handwritten caption by Reppe that reveals he found this photograph on the street. This seems to reveal that unlike other WWI soldiers who took home postcards from France as souvenirs, Reppe was already collector before going overseas.

Five postcards date from Reppe's time in France, including one real photo postcard of German soldiers and women. Reppe notes that he found two of these postcards on the battlefield in October 1918, and German soldiers originally owned them. The remaining twenty-two postcards contain images of Koblenz (Coblenz), presumably purchased by Reppe while in the Army of Occupation in 1919.

Four typewritten military documents are in the collection, and date from August 27, 1917 to May 23, 1919. Two of these are leave passes, one is a list of men on guard duty, and one is a memorandum about sanitation at Camp Douglas. These items were all mounted on scrapbook paper, and it appears that Reppe kept these and some of his postcards in a now disbound scrapbook.

There is also a train ticket from 1917 from Stanley, Wisconsin to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

Also included in the collection is a British Lusitania Medal from 1916, with its original box and a paper fragment providing context to the medal. The sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, caused the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans. Although Germany protested it had every right to treat the Lusitania as an enemy vessel, the incident led to outrage in the United States and Britain. The medal in the collection is a British copy of a German medal made by the artist Karl Goetz after the incident. Though Goetz had intended his medal as a satire of British outrage over the Lusitania, the British disseminated over 300,000 translated copies of Goetz's work for English-speaking audiences. In spite of the misleading British description of the medal, the damage done by this piece of propaganda led to German authorities confiscating all known copies of the original medal. The German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, which ended in September 1915 in response to American outrage over the Lusitania, started back up in early 1917 and became a major factor in America's entry into the war.

A 2018 restrike of Kerr Eby's "A Southern Unit" print from the original copper plate is also present. Canadian-American artist Kerr Eby created this powerful image representing the downtrodden state of African-American soldiers in France. Eby's service in the AEF turned him into an ardent pacifist. When America again entered a global conflict in 1941, Eby served in the combat artists program, mainly in the Pacific. He died in 1946 at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut, from a tropical disease contracted while covering the Second World War.

The collection has a photograph of Rosa Heidler Lorenz at the grave of her son Joseph Lorenz, at Suresnes, France, on May 18, 1930. In 1929, after a decade of political debate, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill allocating five million dollars to subsidize pilgrimages to Europe for the mothers of deceased American soldiers buried overseas. In all, some 6,000 women chose to take the two-week trip to visit their sons' graves. These trips are known as the Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimages, and took place between 1930-1933. In a sad echo of the discrimination African-American soldiers faced more than a decade earlier, African-American mothers were segregated from their white counterparts during their pilgrimages. A significant number of mothers who went overseas were foreign-born and included many Germans. Rosa Heidler Lorenz was one such German immigrant. Her son, Private First Class Joseph Lorenz, was wounded in late July while fighting with the 42nd Division before dying of his wounds at a base hospital on November 21, 1918. In late May 1930, newspapers across the country published this moving image of Lorenz weeping at the grave of her son.

The collection contains a wooden clog painted with an American and French flag, with the inscription, "Souvenir de France." These clogs were a popular type of souvenir that soldiers often sent home to their families. Also included is a printed piece of sheet music from 1917 for the song "Hail! Hail! The Gang's All Here" and a copy of the printed exhibit bulletin from 2018.

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This collection consists of three miniature moving panoramas from ca. 1868 to 1878. These include two educational toy panoramas by Milton Bradley, "The Historiscope: A Panorama & History of America" and "The Myriopticon: A Historical Panorama of the Rebellion." Also included is a dual scrolling lithograph entitled "Excursion Views of Narragansett Bay and Block Island" by the Excursion View Co.

This collection consists of three miniature moving panoramas from ca. 1868 to 1878.

The Historiscope: A Panorama & History of America. Springfield, Mass.: Milton Bradley & Co., ca. 1868. Comprised of a scrolled hand-colored lithographed panorama on rollers, housed in a cardboard box with window for viewing. The viewing box measures 22 x 14 x 6 cm and the lithograph measures 11cm in height. The viewing window simulates a proscenium with a stage, footlights, and balconies. The subject of the lithograph is the history of America from Columbus through the end of the Revolutionary War. It contains 25 scenes of both iconic moments in early American history and generic images; e.g., Pocahontas saving John Smith's life, Pilgrims landing in Massachusetts, trading with Native Americans, George Washington at Valley Forge, and the surrender of Cornwallis's army at Yorktown. Many of these scenes are based on paintings, prints or photographs that were well known. An example is the scene of the landing of Columbus based off of John Vanderlyn's painting, Landing of Columbus (1846), which also appeared on a15-cent stamp in 1869. The knobs on top used to move the lithograph are not original.

The Myriopticon: A Historical Panorama of the Rebellion. Springfield, Mass.: Milton Bradley & Co., ca. 1868. Similar to the Historiscope except in terms of subject matter and artwork. The Myriopticon picks up where Historiscope left off. It contains 22 scenes representing the Civil War, many of which originate from Harper's Weekly and other magazines or newspapers. The panorama shows various battles and camp scenes; e.g., the battle of Fort Sumter, Winslow Homer's The Army of the Potomac-A Sharpshooter (1862), the battle between ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, and the burning of Richmond. The knobs on top used to move the lithograph are not original.

Both the Historiscope and Myriopticon were accompanied by a lecture booklet, promotional broadside, and admission tickets (none extant in this collection). They were marketed toward young children around the ages of 7 to 12. To create a more immersive theatrical experience it was suggested to exhibit the panorama in a dark room, backlit with a candle. Once the provided script had been exhausted, children were encouraged to create their own narrative to pair with the panoramas. Milton Bradley's intent when creating these moving panoramas was to serve not only as optical toys, but as interactive visual lessons. They fit into his larger idea of mass-producing aesthetic educational devices.

Excursion Views of Narragansett Bay and Block Island. Providence, RI: Excursion View Co., ca. 1878. Comprised of two chromolithographed panoramas on rollers housed in a wood viewing box with glass panes on two sides. On the bottom is a paper map which lists each point, in order, shown in the panorama. The viewing box measures 34 x 14.5 x 13 cm and the lithographs measure 9.5 cm in height. The first lithograph shows scenes from the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay starting at Fox Point and ending at Brenton's Reef. The second lithograph shows scenes of Block Island, Conanicut Island, and the western shore ending at Sassafras Point. The panoramas also include text marking notable locations and structures. These moving panoramas were created due to the popularity of steamboat excursion tours from Providence (Rhode Island) to Block Island and back. This miniature panorama was likely an expensive souvenir; a way to simulate or relive the experience for the viewers. The knobs on top used to move the lithograph are not original.

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This collection contains 11 pencil sketches of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers and their surrounding cities. The sketches depict cityscapes, scenic and street views.

This collection contains 11 pencil sketches of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers and their surrounding cities. Each 11.5 x 18.5 cm sketch includes a brief handwritten caption denoting location. The sketches illustrate cityscapes, scenic and street views. Cities shown include Omaha, Nebraska; Saint Joseph, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; and Cincinnati, Ohio. Specific locations depicted include Lafayette Park and Shaw’s Botanical Garden (Missouri Botanical Garden) in St. Louis, Missouri, and Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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This collection of small paintings is housed in an embossed leather carte-de-visite album with a single metal clasp. Within are 12 landscape oil paintings of Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the Glens Falls area. Each image includes a caption denoting location.

This collection of small paintings is housed in an embossed leather carte-de-visite album with a single metal clasp. Within are 12 landscape oil paintings of Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the Glens Falls area. Each oil painting includes a handwritten caption denoting location.

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Our National Ball Game is a foldable game board with two dice, eight counters, and instructions on how to play this board game version of baseball.

Our National Ball Game is a foldable game board with two dice, eight counters, and instructions on how to play this board game version of baseball. Printed on the board is a colored sketch of two teams playing baseball in a stadium and an advertisement that the game is "a delightful entertainment for Old & Young." Two teams take turns rolling the dice, and the numbers on the dice correspond with various baseball plays. Like the game of baseball, after nine rounds, the team with the most runs wins the game.

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A set of six wooden medallions, in original box, commemorating the 1876 International Exhibition held at Fairmont Park, Philadelphia. The underside of the box lid is a lithograph showing the exhibition grounds and buildings.

The Philadelphia Ornamental Wood Co. Medals, 1786 collection is a set of six wooden medallions, in original box, commemorating the 1876 International Exhibition held at Fairmont Park, Philadelphia. Four of the medals measure 2.5 inches in diameter. The other two are 3 inches in diameter. The reverse of the smaller medals contains the inscription "The 100TH Anniversary of American Independence; Great International Exhibition; Fairmont park; Philadelphia; 4th of July; 1876." The reverse of the two larger medals reads "The 100th Anniversary of American Independence; 4th of July 1876; Exhibition Open from May 10 to Nov 10 1876; Fairmont Park; Philadelphia; U.S. America."

The underside of the box lid is a lithograph of the view of the exhibition grounds and buildings. The lithograph, published by Breuker & Kessler of Philadelphia, is titled "Birds Eye View of the International Exhibition Buildings 1876." Also written on the lithograph is the inscription, "Manufactured by the Ornamental Wood Co., Phila." The box also is inscribed: "Manufactured by the Philadelphia Ornamental Wood Co. 1129 Cherry Street."

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