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Dexter, Michigan, collector of materials relating to the history of railroading in Michigan. Correspondence, subject files, printed matter and photographs; contain material concerning the Ann Arbor Railroad, the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, the Manistee and Northeastern Railway Company, the Michigan Central Railroad, the Pere Marquette Railroad, and Ephraim Shay.

The Stoner collection contains about 3,600 photographs and negatives collected by Stoner, relating primarily to Michigan railroads. The collection also contains related manuscript materials.

Stoner's major collecting interests were in the Ann Arbor, Grand Trunk Western, and Pere Marquette Railroads and their predecessors, and in logging railroads, especially Ephraim Shay's railroad and others using Shay locomotives. Along with these lines, the collection contains photos of dozens of other railroads, not all in Michigan.

The photographs most commonly depict locomotives, often with their crews posed beside. Other common subjects are railroad stations (exteriors only), train wrecks, trains in motion, logging operations, carferries, railroad bridges, the Detroit-Windsor railroad tunnel, and street railroads.

Dozens of Michigan cities and towns and a number of places in other states are represented in the collection. Places depicted most often in the photos include Ann Arbor, Cadillac, Detroit, Durand, Frankfort, Harbor Springs, and Howell, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario.

The collection is organized into seven series: Classified photos, Unclassified photos, Albums, Unclassified negatives, Papers, Classified negatives, and Duplicate material.

Appended to this finding aid are two indexes, one for railroads and company names, the other for subjects. The indexes contain references to all items in the Classified photos, Unclassified photos, Albums, and Unclassified negatives series.

The index to railroads and company names indexes logging and industrial companies that operated railroads, as well as railroad lines themselves. It does not index locomotive manufacturers, nor does it index the names of railroad museums where some of the photos were taken.

The index to subjects indexes place names and topical subjects. It does not index the term "locomotives" since the majority of the photos in the collection would be indexed under that heading. Place names are indexed if the photo includes a view of some part of the place or of some event at the place. Close-up views of locomotives that do not show any background are not indexed by place, even if the description of the photo identifies where it was taken.

Pioneer in the private camping movement, founder and director of Al-Gon-Quian Boys Camp on Burt Lake in Cheboygan County, Michigan, and officer in the American Camping Association. Correspondence, articles, speeches and photographs; also Camp Al-Gon-Quian materials, including program files, reports, roster files, and published yearly programs; materials of King family, missionaries in China; and plans of Twining home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, originally designed by Albert Kahn and his associate Malcolm for Louis A. Strauss.

The papers of Herbert Twining, except for an earlier family letter from 1888, date from the 1920s to 1980. The collection is broken down into a series of personal and family materials, a series on Camp Al-Gon-Quian, 1931-1967, and photographs.

Works Projects Administration district manager, official in the Office of Price Administration and executive secretary to Governor G. Mennen Williams. Materials concerning Michigan Democratic politics, particularly the elections of 1948 and 1952, his work for the W.P.A. and O.P.A. and his with the Michigan Children's Aid Society.

The Farrell collection is arranged into the following series: Correspondence, Political Papers, Works Projects Administration, Office of Price Administration, and Other Papers.

Photographs (positive and negative), slides, and transparencies taken by the company's photographers to document company activities, products, services, employees at work and at leisure, company exhibits and commemorations, and the response of the company to natural disasters and civil disturbances.

In 1993, Michigan Bell as a corporate entity was subsumed within the Ameritech Corporation. As a by-product of this reorganization and the downsizing resulting from it, the company agreed to deposit with the Bentley Historical Library its extensive archive of photographic images. Totalling approximately one million images, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company photo archive consists of negatives, copy prints, and color transparencies taken in the period since World War II (the bulk beginning in 1949). The collection does not include photos taken since 1983; interspersed throughout, however, are numerous images from before 1949.

The collection has been maintained in the order received with two principal series: Positives and Negatives.

The content of the photographs in the two series varies considerably. Naturally the collection documents the products of the company (phones and other communication devices) and the services provided (e.g. employees at work or the company reacting to a specific customer need). These photos were taken both to inform the general public as accompaniment to press notices and advertising copy and as a communications vehicle within the company, informing employees through the company news publication, Tielines, of activities going on in other divisions of the company or among the various regional Bell offices.

More importantly perhaps, the collection has value for its documentation of events and activities that are common to all large companies. These include images relating to: 1. The activities of employees within the corporation at their work (office workers, repairmen, operators, various support personnel, managers, etc.); 2. The activities of employees outside their work routine as members of corporate social groups (i.e., the company baseball or ice hockey team), at home engaged in leisure time activities, or involved in company-sponsored charitable or public service functions; and 3. Commemorations of specific milestones or events (company parade floats, area office open houses, corporate displays at public events such as fairs, etc.).

In addition, the collection documents the extraordinary and unforeseen as the phone company reacts to events and emergencies not within its control (floods, tornadoes, fires, the 1967 Detroit riot, strikes, and the like) or as a participant in history-making events (the announcement in Ann Arbor of the success of the Salk polio vaccine or the preparation involved in the 1980 Republican National Convention that convened in Detroit).

Michigan congressman and senator, head of the U.S. Office of Price Administration; papers include correspondence, legislative files, speeches, political files, business and legal records, diaries and scrapbooks, visual materials, and sound recordings.

The Prentiss M. Brown Collection is rich and full and offers researchers materials on a variety of local and national topics reflecting the diversity of the man's private and public life. The earliest item in the collection is a letter book dated 1902-04 of James J. Brown, like his son a prominent St. Ignace attorney. The collection then picks up Prentiss M. Brown's entrance to the legal profession in 1917, traces his rise to public office, his work in Congress and with the O.P.A., and then concludes with his later business interests and his crusade upon behalf of the Mackinac Bridge.

The Brown Collection comprises approximately twenty-eight feet of correspondence, letterbooks, scrapbooks, diaries, speeches, topical and legislative files, photographs and phonograph records, and legal case files and business records. Covering the period 1917 to 1973, the papers concentrate most heavily in the years 1932-1942 when Brown was in the U.S. Congress. The greatest gap in the collection is in the period of the 1920s when Brown was making his first bids for political office. Also missing are any extensive files for the time of Brown's O.P.A. directorship. What the collection has on the O.P.A. are largely speeches, scrapbooks, and congratulatory letters.

St. Joseph, Berrien County, Michigan family. Papers of family members, primarily correspondence of Ann G. Loomis Preston with her father, Jonathan Loomis, and with her sons Wallace and Fowler, sailors in the Union navy during the Civil War; typescript of excerpt of Civil War diary of Wallace Preston; paper, 1978, of Harriet N. Preston based upon family Civil War experiences; photographs, clippings and miscellanea concerning family and St. Joseph, Michigan.

In 1972, a bundle of over forty Preston family letters, dating mainly from 1850 to 1870, were discovered in the attic of the family home in St. Joseph. Over the next few years, Harriet N. Preston, wife of Arthur G. Preston, Jr. (grandson of Wallace Preston), took an interest in these letters and the Preston family history. Mrs. Preston arranged the letters, compiled typed transcripts, and authored several papers based on the letters.

The Preston family papers document Great Lakes shipping in the nineteenth century, the Union Navy during the Civil War, and daily life in St. Joseph, Michigan during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The collection has been divided into five series: Correspondence; Legal Documents; Newspaper Clippings, Scrapbook and Miscellaneous Materials; Family Histories; and Photographs.

Michigan State Police officer, later mayor of Mackinac Island, Michigan, and owner of the Iroquois Hotel on Mackinac Island. Scattered correspondence and miscellanea; largely photographs, prints, and slides, some of which had been collected by S. Alicia Poole, of views of Mackinac Island, the Straits of Mackinac, and Great Lakes ships and passenger ferries; also personal photographs relating in part to his association with Michigan governor G. Mennen Williams and his Michigan State Police activities.

The McIntire collection consists largely of photographs, slides, postcards, and prints of views of Mackinac Island and the straits of Mackinac. Many of the images are of Great Lakes ships and Straits of Mackinac ferries. As some of these images are labeled "Poole" and because S. Alicia Poole owned the Iroquois before McIntire, it is probable that some of these images at one time belonged to Poole. The researcher should note that the library has a separate S. Alicia Poole collection and should consult both collections for information about Mackinac Island.

A small part of the collection (approximately 1.5 linear inches) consists of manuscript materials detailing McIntire's career. Of interest are correspondence and reports illustrative of some of the problems that a Mackinac Island mayor confronted.

Livingstone was a Detroit, Michigan businessman, banker, and newspaper publisher. He was an advocate of improving shipping on the Great Lakes, helping to found the Lake Carriers' Association. Livingstone successfully lobbied Congress for funds to construct a channel in the lower Detroit River (the Livingstone Channel). The collection consists of manuscript and visual materials, some of which were collected by later family members. Included are diaries and account books, 1871-1882 (scattered) and 1925; correspondence and newspaper clippings; subject files pertaining to the Dime Savings Bank and the Lake Carriers' Association; and a speech book containing draft of speech written for James G. Blaine, presidential candidate in 1884. Visual materials include photographs and drawings.

The papers of William Livingstone consist of manuscript and visual materials, some of which were collected by later family members. The papers include diaries and account books, 1871-1882 (scattered) and 1925; correspondence and newspaper clippings; subject files pertaining to the Dime Savings Bank and the Lake Carriers' Association; and a speech book containing draft of speech written for James G. Blaine, presidential candidate in 1884. Many of the letters in the collection were personal communications sent to Marion Scherer from family and friends while she was away at school. Visual materials include family photographs and drawings. The collection is organized into three series, William Livingston Jr. Topical Files, Correspondence, and Visual Materials.

Charlevoix, Michigan resident, novelist and historian of Great Lakes shipwrecks, the Mackinac Bridge, folklore, and other subjects; correspondence, manuscripts of books, and research materials.

The William Ratigan collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts of his books, research and reference files on topics of interest to him, and photographs. There are letters in the collection from William B. Eerdmans, Marianne Moore, Milo Quaife, David B. Steinman, and folklorist Ivan Walton.

The photographs in the collection are of shipping and boating at Charlevoix, Michigan, of Charlevoix boat builder, Roy Ranger, of construction of the Mackinac Bridge, of the Sault Sainte Marie Canal, and of other topics related to Ratigan's writing interests.