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Founder of the America First Party, head of the Christian Nationalist Crusade, and outspoken anti-Semite. Correspondence, speeches, oral history transcript, memoranda and other materials detailing his criticism of America's participation in World War II, his Michigan senatorial race in 1942, his campaign for the presidency in 1944, his opposition to the spread of communism after the war, and his support of conservative Christian causes and right wing individuals and organizations; and photographs. Portraits of Smith and his wife, Elna Smith; photographs of meetings and conventions of the America First Party, of picketing and other political activity in support of Smith and his platform, and of Smith's associates and supporters; also photographs and portraits of celebrities, buildings, and activities, which Smith collected, probably for use in his publication The Cross and the Flag.

The papers of Gerald L.K. Smith include correspondence, speeches, oral history transcript, memoranda and other materials detailing his criticism of America's participation in World War II, his Michigan senatorial race in 1942, his campaign for the presidency in 1944, his opposition to the spread of communism after the war, and his support of conservative Christian causes and right wing individuals and organizations; and photographs.

The major portion of the Gerald L.K. Smith papers came to the library in the spring of 1982. Before then, the library had accumulated a smaller group of Smith materials, mainly publications of the Christian Nationalist Crusade, mailings out of the Smith office from the 1960's and 1970's, the tapes and transcripts of an interview conducted with Smith in 1968 by a library staff member, and a few microfilm reels of a very small section of Smith's papers.

With the 1982 accession, the Smith collection now totals 102 linear feet of correspondence, memoranda, clippings, published materials, and photographs and motion pictures. The collection covers the years, 1922-1976, but bulks largest for the period since 1939. Regrettably, only scattered materials for the period before 1939 have survived so there is slight documentation of Smith's activities in Louisiana with Huey Long. What has survived from these years are a few letters from parents, some published sermons and radio speeches, and an assortment of notes, clippings, and meeting materials. It is perhaps surprising that not more of the collection had been discarded or mislaid. As the papers came from storage in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the earlier files had been shifted about several times as Smith and his organization moved their base of operation: from Louisiana to Detroit, to St. Louis, to Los Angeles, and then to Eureka Springs. Smith seems to have been a careful record-keeper, however, and very little of the post-1939 files needed processing.

This collection is made up of autobiographical manuscripts, correspondence, documents, and family photograph albums related to James B. Pond, Sr. and Jr. Some of the items pertain to Pond's service during the Civil War and both father and son's lecture business.

This collection is made up of autobiographical manuscripts, correspondence, documents, and family photograph albums related to James B. Pond, Sr. and Jr. Some of the items pertain to Pond Sr.'s service during the Civil War and both father and son's lecture business.

The Pond Family Papers series includes one box containing miscellaneous correspondence ranging in date from 1896-1932, Civil War related material, autobiographical sketches, family photographs, and personal photograph albums.

The Civil War related material includes a few items relating to James Pond's Civil War service in the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry, among which are a typescript of official reports relating to the massacre at Baxter Springs, Kansas, a printed poem on the massacre, and a printed notice of the death in the 1880s of William T. Brayton of the 3rd Cavalry. Pond also collected other reminiscences of the war, including an autobiographical account of Mrs. Horn, wife of a Missouri surgeon, which includes a description of Quantrill's raiders pillaging town and taking her husband prisoner, and a memoir of Edward P. Bridgman, a soldier in the 37th Massachusetts Infantry who served with John Brown in 1856, and may have known Pond.

More than half of this series consists of autobiographical manuscripts, parts of which, at least, were published as magazine articles. Most of these focus on his early years (prior to 1861) when he and his family were living a marginal existence in frontier Wisconsin and when he was a young man in search of a livelihood. The collection includes three major manuscripts, each present in several copies or versions, all of which are related to each other - "A Pioneer Boyhood," "The American Pioneer: My Life as a Boy," and "Pioneer Days" - plus there are less polished manuscripts of childhood and Civil War reminiscences. All appear to have been written initially in 1890, though some copies were apparently made several years later. In addition, there is an autobiographical sketch "How I got started in the Lecture Business" in which he describes his part in Anna Eliza Young's "apostatizing" and entering onto the lecture circuit.

The collection also contains 5 photograph albums. These volumes contain over 800 personal photographs taken between 1896 and 1902, including many pictures of family members at leisure both indoors and outdoors and Pond's business acquaintances from his lecture agency. Travel photographs include views of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, as well as a group of pictures taken during a visit to England, Switzerland, and Germany in 1901. European items include a series of colored prints, located in Volume 4. The albums contain images of locomotives, railroad cars, and steamships. Volume 1 contains images of the inauguration of William McKinley and Volume 2 contains images of crowds gathered for a GAR parade in Buffalo, New York. Throughout the albums are glimpses of various lecture tours and clients including John Watson (Ian Maclaren) and Anthony Hope in Volume 2 and Francis Marion Crawford in Volume 3. Other notable figures include Sam Walter Foss and William Dean Howells in Volume 1, Charles W. Blair and Edward William Bok in Volume 3, and Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Charles William Stubbs, Robert Stawell Ball, Horace Porter, Frank Thomas Bullen, and Israel Zangwill in Volume 4. In addition to the albums, there are loose photographs of family, James B. Pond Jr., and the Adventurers' Club of New York. Oversized photographs are housed in Box 3.

The Pond Lecture Bureau Papers series consists of one box containing client files (arranged chronologically), loose photographs, and ephemera. Much of the content consists of correspondence between clients/prospective clients and photographs of clients (likely for promotional material). This series spans from 1877 to the 1940s covering periods of ownership from both James B. Pond, Sr. and Jr. Some of these clients are as follows: Henry Ward Beecher, Reverend Joseph Parker, Thomas DeWitt Talmage, Leon Pierre Blouet, Reverend John Watson (Ian Maclaren), William Winter, Edward Rickenbacker, Harry A. Franck, Gunnar Horn, Maurice Brown, and Major Radclyffe Dugmore. Unidentified oversized photographs and a scrapbook are housed in Box 3.

The Blandina Diedrich Collection is a selection of manuscript items compiled by her son Duane Norman Diedrich and dedicated to her memory. The content of these letters, sermons, documents, and other materials reflect the life and interests of Blandina Diedrich (1903-1996), most prominently subjects pertinent to Christianity, home, and the family.

The Blandina Diedrich Collection is a selection of manuscript items compiled by her son Duane Norman Diedrich and dedicated to her memory. The manuscripts reflect the life and interests of Blandina Diedrich, most prominently Christianity, home, and the family. Items include sermons from prominent ministers or preachers of different Protestant denominations, documents related to church operations and discipline, letters by prominent and everyday persons respecting their faith and beliefs, correspondence of missionaries, and reflections on religion's role in all manner of human endeavor.

The collection is comprised of over 260 letters, manuscript sermons and hymns, documents, and other items. For a comprehensive inventory and details about each item in the collection, please see the box and folder listing below.

The Nathaniel Stacy papers include correspondence, documents, sermons, and other materials which relate to the personal and professional life of Mr. Stacy, a Universalist preacher.

The Nathaniel Stacy papers include eight boxes of material relating to every aspect of the personal and professional life of a Universalist preacher operating in the hot bed of the Second Great Awakening, the Burnt-Over District of New York. Boxes 1 through 4 contain correspondence arranged chronologically, 1803-1867, followed by undated correspondence arranged alphabetically by author. Box 5 contains Stacy's preaching log, listing date, place and text taken for sermons given between 1803 and 1864, sometimes with additional notes concerning funerals or other special occasions. Box 6 contains 30 numbered lectures given by Stacy in Ann Arbor in 1837 and 1838. Only the first of these is specifically dated. They are filed in numerical order with text taken noted on the folder. Boxes 7 and 8 contain material arranged topically, filed alphabetically by folder title. The Box-Folder listing provides detail. Included in these boxes are Stacy's diaries, with an unbroken run from 1835 through 1868 and scattered earlier and undated fragments, and 18 folders of sermons arranged by text. The bulk of the collection centers around Stacy and the members of his immediate family, and includes some materials generated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by his grandchildren or great-grandchildren, the Smiths of Corry, Pa. The unidentified photographs are probably of these family members.

The Stacy collection is a rich resource for historians of the Universalist Church. Stacy was part of what might be called a second generation of American Universalist preachers, taught by Hosea Ballou and influenced by other members of the General Convention of Universalists of the New England States and Others. He was among the first to preach the doctrine of universal salvation in New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and in each state he founded a number of local societies and regional associations. Stacy's papers vividly document the hardships involved in the life of an itinerant preacher of an unpopular doctrine. The financial difficulties inherent in such a career are reflected in his appeals to various Societies for whom he preached to honor their subscriptions or allow him to leave, and in letters from other struggling preachers bemoaning their meager earnings or looking for a better place; they are implicit in all his financial juggling and in schemes for supplementing his income, ranging from the disastrous reprinting of Marie Hubers's The State of Souls Separated From Their Bodies (1:46) to an ill-fated speculation in cheese (3:91). The individual societies for whom Stacy preached are variously documented in 8:35-39. For example, materials concerning the Society in Hamilton are unfortunately sparse, consisting of one letter of appeal from Stacy and a draft report to the Western Association of Universalists. The Society in Columbus is better documented, with a constitution and list of members dated 1834 and a record of church proceedings from 1834 to 1847 as well as a number of Stacy's accounts and subscription lists. The run of undated sermons (8:18-35) is useful for study of Universalist doctrine, as are the dated occasional sermons which may be found in the card catalog under Stacy's name. Running throughout the correspondence is a considerable debate on the subject of universal salvation versus endless misery, and these debates are echoed and extended in Stacy's diaries and Memoirs.

Stacy's ministry in New York occurred during one of the most volatile periods in the state's history. The collection documents the intense interest in religion in general and the willingness to question established doctrine which characterized the Burnt-Over District during this period. Letters such as one dated January 1, 1819 (1:37) offer moving descriptions of the spiritual hunger and emotional turmoil which stirred many, although a counterbalance is offered in such letters as the one dated January 20, 1828 (2:9) which offers a rationalistic discussion of the illogical nature of such biblical imagery as that of armies of angels in heaven. A number of Stacy's correspondents describe protracted religious meetings and local revivals (indexed under Revivals; and Enthusiasm). Universalist ministers generally disapproved of the techniques of the evangelical churches, and Stacy avidly collected stories of people driven to madness, infanticide, and suicide by Calvinism (1:59; 3:78,92). Yet it is also clear, as one fellow minister pointed out to Stacy, that the Universalist Church benefited both by the interest in religion stirred up by the revivals and by the renewed commitment of the enlightened who found such meeting objectionable (3:11) A letter from a niece turned Mormon requests Stacy to "give me the Names of your Anchestors as far back as you can gain eny knowledge and also give me the Names of your Children that are dead that I may have them to be handed down from generation to generation after me" (4:38). In another interesting series of letters, Stacy acts as advocate for an elderly neighbor, a former Shaker who had been expelled from their community, and who was seeking their support (see subject index under Shakers).

In Michigan and Ann Arbor, Stacy experienced the region's transition from territory to state and the hard times following the Panic of 1837. His correspondence from this period, and in particular his diaries, which he began to keep regularly upon his removal to Michigan, offer a window onto life in a frontier town. Although his daily entries are seldom lengthy, the cumulative effect of the diaries is to provide a rich picture of Stacy's social and economic setting and, as a side benefit, of his very appealing personality.

Those interested in Freemasonry and the Antimasonic excitement which played such an important role in determining Stacy's actions will find materials of interest in the collection. Two examples of Antimasonic rhetoric are found in letters dating from 1829, written by a kinswoman who exhorted Stacy to divest himself of the "vile robes" of the "base ferternity," while listing the ghastly crimes committed by Masons (2:15,17). Clippings concerning his Masonic affiliation and two speeches delivered in lodges are included in 8:14. Also of interest are two series of legal materials: one concerning the estate of David Curtis, founder of Columbus, Pa., for which Stacy acted as executor (7:1), and one concerning the legal separation of Stacy's niece, Rhoda Porter Thompson from her second husband (8:41). Each set of documents includes an inventory of the principal's household goods. Stacy's register of marriages (8:13) and his log of sermons, which often gives some detail about those at whose funerals he preached (5), include useful material for genealogists. The subject index includes topics covered in less detail in the papers, such as Stacy's chaplaincy during the second campaign at Sackett's Harbor in the War of 1812, and his involvement in various Temperance groups.