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The Benjamin Brown collection is made up of correspondence, documents, and artifacts related to the showman's career as a circus owner in the early 1800s. Many of the letters relate to his journey to Egypt between 1838 and 1840, as he attempted to procure giraffes for an American menagerie company; to his other travels; and to the contemporary American circus industry.

The Benjamin Brown collection is made up of correspondence, documents, and artifacts related to the showman's career as a circus owner in the early 1800s.

Letters, documents, and printed materials concern Brown's early ventures as a show owner, including correspondence and financial records pertaining to his travels in the Caribbean and to the northeast coast of South America in the early 1830s. These materials document the difficulties of transporting exotic animals by sea, the type of equipment necessary to run a circus, and other logistical issues.

A later group of letters and documents reflects Brown's experiences in Egypt, where he traveled as an agent of the June, Titus, Angevine & Company, attempting to purchase giraffes. Many of these letters are from Stebbins B. June, who was also in Egypt at the time, and several items relate to George R. Gliddon, United States consul in Cairo. Brown's friend Gerard Crane wrote about Brown's business affairs in New York, and frequently reported the increasingly frail health of Brown's father. Benjamin Brown received a letter from P. T. Barnum, who asked him to find a pair of fortune tellers for Barnum's museum. He also inquired about locating a pony small enough to accommodate his performer Tom Thumb (June 29, 1843). While in London, Brown frequently received letters from his sister, Eudocia Brown Noyes, who wrote of the Brown family farm and provided other news from Somers, New York.

The collection includes playbills and broadsides advertising Brown's circus; Brown's marriage license (March 20, 1841); a pencil sketch of Brown; two passports; and three fragments of an Arabic-language scroll, offering protection to the bearer. Later material includes newspaper clippings from 1879, 1880, and 1931, on Brown's life and career, as well as an audio tape of an interview with his grandson, Benjamin Brown.

Box 2 of the collection includes correspondence, documents, printed items, photographs, and audio recordings related to the history of Benjamin Brown, the circus, and Somers, New York. Principally organized around the career and research of Carrie Brown Rorer (1903-1969), President of the Somers Historical Society and Benjamin F. Brown's great-grandaughter, the material provides insight into public history, memory, and research on the circus. Included is a typed document, "Circus History: Recollections by Benjamin Brown (1877-1962) as told to Carrie Brown Roher, (1903-1969), who was one of his three daughters," which details memories of Benjamin F. Brown and family stories about him.

• Two shoes, [1800s]
• Burnoose, [1800s]
• Black circus jacket, [1800s]
• Pipe stem and bowl
• Two rocks
• Fragments from an ostrich eggshell
• Canopic jar lid
• Two small boxes
• Ushabti figure
• Harpocrates figure

The Egyptian figures may date to around 600 BCE.

Republican member of the state house and the state senate; president of the University Musical Society. Legislative and campaign files, 1919-1935, detailing his election campaigns, his activities within the legislature, and his various responsibilities as a member of the Republican State Central Committee; general correspondence files, 1922-1960, largely pertaining to his work with the University Musical Society and other civic activities; topical files; family history and memoirs; diaries and appointment books; papers of wife Alva Gordon Sink; and visual materials.

Political activist, concert pianist, sister-in-law of Eleanor Roosevelt. Biographical materials; correspondence with politicians, musical figures and other dignitaries; also personal materials concerning her concert career, her campaign for Congress in 1942, notably a journal of her daughters' trip to Europe in 1949; and photographs.

The papers of Dorothy Kemp Roosevelt relate to her political and social interests and activities. The collection is divided into three series: Biographical materials, Correspondence, and Personal.

River Rouge, Michigan, high school teacher. Travel letters and related materials detailing trips to most areas of the world; letters include comments on physical conditions, geographic descriptions, and cultural observations; also scrapbooks with photographs and clippings.

The Eunice M. Brake collection consists of travel letters, diaries and photographs relating to her various world travels between 1934 and 1982. In addition to the letters, which make up the bulk of the material, a number of menus, paper games and entertainment programs typical of those used by ocean liners in the 1930s are included in the collection.

The two scrapbooks included with the papers contain numerous personal and commercially distributed photographs from her trips to the Soviet Union and Australia. Included with them are numerous photos of London, Leningrad, Moscow, Athens, and Paris (circa 1934) and Australia, Samoa and Fiji (circa 1937).

The Brake papers (1 linear foot) are arranged geographically by the country or countries of destination and year of trip. Within each folder, the letters are arranged chronologically. All photographs are included with the letters (trips) to which they relate.

The letters were written with the intention of sharing information with family members and friends. The letters were then returned to the author for retention. In some cases, to save time, she made copies of the letters and added different and unique passages onto the end for family members or friends.

These documents are travel letters in which the writer comments on physical conditions and provides cultural observations and geographic descriptions. The letters which were written during the years in Japan and Thailand provide the greatest amount of detail. Brake writes about educational conditions and teaching methods in the Japanese and Thai schools. She describes social and religious ceremonies and customs of both cultures. Many of the letters detail her relation to and interaction with the local people of each society.

Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Literature at the University of Michigan; personal and professional correspondence relating to archeological expeditions and discoveries in Iran and the Near East.

The George Cameron papers consist of personal and professional correspondence mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. Very little of the materials relates to his work as founder and professor of the U-M Department of Near Eastern Studies. The bulk relates to his interaction and communication with other scholars in the field. The collection has been arranged into three series: Biographical, Correspondence, and Other materials.

Resident in China from Farwell, Michigan; papers concern her family life in Farwell, and missionary activities; include letters, diaries, and accounts of father, Josiah L. Littlefield, Farwell lumber dealer and visitor to China, 1916-1917; letters, 1918-1928, of husband, Dr. Dennis V. Smith, medical missionary to China, describing in part Chinese politics and civil war, 1918-1920; letters and other papers of Hazel Littlefield Smith, including materials concerning various European travels, and manuscripts of writings about Irish author Lord Dunsany, her father, and Farwell, Michigan; and photographs. Other correspondents of Hazel Smith include world-renowed scientists (Edwin Hubble and William Beebe), from Chinese Princess Der Ling, and from distinguished European writers and actors (Pierre LaMure, Selma Lagerlof, Brian Aherne, and Ronald Colman).

This collection was accumulated by Hazel Littlefield Smith and consists of materials concerning her career and interests and those of her family, specifically her husband, Dr. Dennis Smith, and her father, Josiah Littlefield (1845-1935), a pioneer lumberman and businessman in Farwell, Michigan.

The collection is particularly valuable for three topics: early days (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) in Farwell, Michigan; missionary life in China in the period ca. 1915-1928; and the travels and writings of Hazel Littlefield Smith. The materials include correspondence, compositions and business-related materials of Josiah Littlefield; correspondence and other materials of Dr. Dennis Smith, Hazel Littlefield Smith (and Josiah Littlefield) concerning conditions in early republican China; and correspondence and other materials of Hazel Littlefield Smith concerning her travels in Europe (1920s-1950s), her management of the family farm near Farwell, Michigan (1940s), and her essays, poetry and other publications, including Lord Dunsany: King of Dreams.

The three principal figures in the collection--Hazel Littlefield Smith, Dennis Smith and Josiah Littlefield--were highly perceptive observers of persons and events. Their letters are rich in detail, whether describing travel experiences or everyday life in rural northern Michigan.

The collection is arranged into six series: Littlefield Family, China-related materials, Hazel Littlefield Smith, Miscellanea, Dr. Dennis V. Smith, and Visual Materials.

The Norton Strange Townshend Family papers include correspondence, diaries, essays, lectures, printed matter, clippings, financial and legal papers, photographs, daguerreotypes, ephemera, realia, maps, and books belonging to the Townshend and Dodge families, who were connected by the marriage of Margaret Wing (granddaughter of Norton Townshend) and Homer Levi Dodge (grandson of Levi Dodge) in 1917. Much of the collection documents the life and career of politician and agricultural educator Norton Strange Townshend, including his political, educational, and social reform activities.

The Norton Strange Townshend Family Papers consist of 20.5 linear feet of manuscripts, 66 cased photographs, 3 linear feet of paper photographs, 8 cubic feet of photographic slides, and 7 cubic feet of realia, arranged into 13 series. For more detail, see scope and content notes, below.

The Correspondence series (Boxes 1-10) contains all the collection’s letters, postcards, and telegrams (with the exception of official military correspondence, financial correspondence, and genealogy correspondence, which are under "Topical Files," "Financial Correspondence," and "Genealogical Correspondence," respectively). Correspondence spans the years 1827-1989 and makes up around one quarter of the collection. It is subdivided by family into the "Townshend Subseries" and "Dodge Subseries," and arranged chronologically, with undated items at the end. The series contains correspondence to and from prominent Ohio politicians, such as Salmon P. Chase; who wrote 34 letters to Townshend; William Medill; Rutherford B. Hayes; and notable agricultural educators, including James Sullivant and John Klippart. Correspondence among family members is also voluminous, and documents a wide variety of issues during the mid-19th to early-20th centuries, including social and family life, courtship, women’s work and viewpoints, travel, and attitudes toward education. For an index of correspondents, see "Additional Descriptive Data."

The Joel Townshend papers series (Box 10) brings together documents by and related to Norton Townshend’s father, Joel Townshend (1780-1864). It includes a few religious writings, as well as financial and legal documents that shed light on the family’s life in Northamptonshire, England, and Ohio. Most items date from 1810 to 1830, with the exception of a biography of Townshend written in the 1930s or 1940s by his great-grandson, H. Percy Boynton.

The Norton S. Townshend papers series (Boxes 10-26) is the largest series in the collection and contains diaries, published and unpublished writings, printed materials, clippings, broadsides, biographical materials, and other items relating to nearly every facet of Townshend’s adult life. These materials document Townshend’s political involvement, particularly in local and national antislavery, in agricultural movements, and in the U.S. House of Representatives. The series also includes papers about his educational career, family life, Civil War service, and religious views and work. Townshend frequently worked and reworked his ideas on paper, and both his published and unpublished writings are a rich source of intellectual and reform history. Townshend was also an inveterate collector and preserver of interesting items, including materials relating to northern Ohio’s Liberty Party, his admission tickets to medical courses and the World Anti-Slavery Convention, an application to the Ohio State Asylum for the Education of Idiotic and Imbecile Youth, of which he was a trustee, and dozens of fliers and handbills for lectures given by himself and others.

The Margaret Bailey Townshend papers series (Boxes 26-27) is comprised of two diaries, a rich autobiographical writing entitled "Genealogy," describing her childhood and education, a small number of clippings, and materials relating to her education and career as a teacher in Illinois and Ohio in the 1850s. Many items in the Realia series (below) also relate to Margaret Bailey Townshend.

The Other Townshend family members’ papers series (Boxes 28-30) contains materials relating mainly to Townshend’s children and their spouses, but also includes James B. Wood (Townshend’s father-in-law), Harriet Wood Townshend (Townshend’s first wife), Margaret Wing Dodge (Townshend’s granddaughter), and several other relatives. The bulk of this series is made up of their writings, which are autobiographical, religious, and cultural in subject. Also of interest is biographical information on family members, including articles on Townshend’s children, who were early students of Ohio State University, and a number of obituaries of these family members.

The Dodge family papers series (Boxes 30-34) consists of materials produced and collected by the Dodges of upstate New York, from 1839 to approximately 1970, and documenting their family life, travels, hobbies (in particular the outdoors and canoeing), financial and legal transactions, and civic engagement. Incorporated are some writings by various family members, including Levi R. Dodge, F. Isabella (Donaghue) Dodge, Homer Dodge, and family friend Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck; topical files, the bulk of which are 20th century; biographical materials such as obituaries and clippings; and periodicals on topics of interest to the Dodges.

The Genealogical research series (Boxes 35-37) reflects the family’s interest in its own history and consists of correspondence, family trees, historical essays, as well as commercially produced family histories for some lines. The materials reflect a particular interest in finding links between various family members and such prominent figures as the Townshends of Raynham Hall, the Green family of Vermont, and General Grenville Dodge. This series pertains mainly to the 20th century and is arranged by family, except for the correspondence, which is arranged chronologically.

The Collection-related materials series is made up of documents and articles that shed light on the outreach efforts made on behalf of the collection, particularly for the Easterly items, prior to their accessioning by the William L. Clements Library. The series is comprised of fliers, museum publicity materials, and articles on exhibits. Materials date from the late 20th century, particularly the 1990s.

The Books series contains three items that are housed with the collection: Sermons on Various Subjects by the Late Rev. Thomas Strange, Kilsby, Northamptonshire, with Some Memoirs of His Life (1807); the Townshend Family Bible (with manuscript notes on births, deaths and marriages); and Robert W. McCormick’s 1988 self-published biography of Townshend: Norton S. Townshend, M.D. Antislavery Politician and Agricultural Educator. The rest of the books, including books from the personal libraries of Norton Townshend, Joel Townshend, Margaret Bailey Townshend, and the Dodge family, are housed in the Book Division of the Clements Library; for the list of titles, search for "M-3437" in the University of Michigan's library catalog.

The Visual materials series is arranged by type of item and then by subject. This includes daguerreotypes by prominent daguerreotypist Thomas M. Easterly, other photographs, drawings/prints, and maps. The materials range from the 1840s to the 1970s. See also Realia series below.

The Realia series contains approximately 8 linear feet of objects, including items from the childhood and teaching career of Margaret Bailey Townshend, intricate hairwork jewelry and a hair wreath made with the locks of at least 16 family members, geological materials and fossils collected by Norton Townshend and possibly Thomas Easterly, and other three-dimensional objects such as a glass vial for medicine, ribbons from the Ohio State Fair, and decorative objects. Also noteworthy are a number of paper objects, such as Civil War era chromolithograph animal toys, a Japanese paper lantern, and an alphabet game for children.

The Dodge Photographic Slides series includes eight cubic feet of photographic slides, totaling approximately 22,000 slides, attributed to Homer L. Dodge. They document travels around the southwest United States and to countries such as Japan, Canada and Sweden.

The Miscellaneous series contains envelopes without accompanying letters, blank letterhead, and a binder of transcriptions of select letters from Harriet Wood Townshend to Sarah Wood Keffer.

Grand Rapids, Michigan family, involved in furniture making and other businesses, also active in local state and Republican Party politics and businessmen's associations. Papers include family papers and correspondence, business records, scrapbooks and visual materials.

The Sligh family collection consists of the personal and business papers of the four generations of Slighs mentioned in the biographical introduction: James W. Sligh, Charles R. Sligh, Charles R. Sligh, Jr., and Robert L. Sligh. Although there is some overlap, the files have been arranged into seven series, one for each of these three Slighs, one for the Sligh Furniture Company and related family businesses, and one each for Newspaper clippings and Scrapbooks, and Visual Materials.