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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.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, women's organization formed to provide friendship and assistance to foreign women visitors to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. Minutes, reports, bulletins and newsletters, slide presentations, and other materials relating to their activities.

The records of the International Neighbors document the activities, services, and organization of the International Neighbors. It is significant for showing the development of a community organization to satisfy needs of foreign women in Ann Arbor and for revealing social interactions among American and foreign women. The record group is organized into three series: Administrative Files, Activities, and Publications.

Detroit Free Press outdoor writer and later faculty member in the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources. Files of Detroit Free Press outdoor pages and conservation articles, clippings, and photographs, correspondence, and notes on Michigan conservation history, pesticides, pollution, plants and animals, hunting and fishing, parks, rivers and lakes, conservation writing, and ecology; also manuscript of history of conservation in Michigan with background information; and materials gathered for intended biographical study of Michigan conservationists.

As a long-time observer of the Michigan conservation scene, Van Coevering collected a wide range of materials to document the history of hunting, fishing, and wildlife management, the development of state parks and forests, political development of the Department of Conservation and Conservation Commission, concerns about pollution and pesticide poisoning, and other conservation and environmental matters in Michigan. This collection is made up of his writings and background materials on all these topics.

The collection contains only a part of Van Coevering's papers. His "personal" papers were destroyed by his widow after his death. Included here are "historical" papers collected in the course of his work as an outdoor writer. The papers include press releases, clippings, memoranda, reports, and other documents collected by Van Coevering as well as correspondence. Van Coevering's outgoing correspondence is generally of the information-seeking type, and provides little insight into his ideas.

The collection is divided into five major series: Publications, Reference file, School of Natural Resources file, Michigan conservation history file, and Photographs. There is also a small folder of obituaries and other personal information in Box 1. In 1996, the library received an addition to the collection. This 1996 accession from Frank Angelo includes the manuscript of "A Brief History of Conservation in Michigan," and the accompanying research as well as background research for a proposed history of prominent Michigan conservationists.

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 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.