Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Republican U.S. Senator from Michigan, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines; files relating to his various career responsibilities, photographs, sound recordings.

The Homer Ferguson collection has been divided into eleven series based primarily upon the important phases of his public life: Personal; Circuit Judgeship; Senate Career; Interregnum: November 1954 - April 1955; Hoover Commission; Philippine Ambassadorship; United States Court of Military Appeals; Inter-Parliamentary Union; Photographs, Sound Recordings, and Myrtle Ferguson Papers.

Religious pacifist organization; correspondence, minutes of meetings, files of the editor of the Michigan F.O.R. News, topical files, and sound recording.

This record group came from two different sources. The papers for the period 1940 to 1951 were discovered in the basement of the Guild House at the University of Michigan. The papers for the years 1951 to 1957 are the files of past editors of the newsletter which were turned over to Rebecca Shelley when she became editor in 1958. The files on her period as editor are located in her personal papers also located at the Michigan Historical Collections. There is much additional information on the Michigan Fellowship of Reconciliation in the Shelley papers both before and after she served as editor. The library also has an almost complete file of the newsletters of the Michigan Fellowship of Reconciliation between 1940 and 1968 which has been separately cataloged and is not described in this finding aid.

The record group has been divided into the following series: Correspondence; Organizational Papers; Other Organizations; Record of meetings; and Other materials.

Ann Arbor, Michigan resident and businessman with strong interest in local history. Collection includes video featuring interviews with residents and other historical footage of landmarks and events in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and the hamlet of Dixboro as well as collected papers and records related to Ann Arbor High School and Dixboro United Methodist Church.

Most of the collection consists of digitized film footage and digital video relating to Ann Arbor and Michigan history. A small portion of the collection also includes biographical and genealogical material.

Democratic governor of Michigan, 1961-1963; gubernatorial office files, campaign files, papers from his career as state senator and lieutenant governor.

The John B. Swainson collection consists of four subgroups of files: pre-gubernatorial (covering the period of 1943 to 1960), gubernatorial (covering his one-term, two-year tenure as the state's chief executive), post-gubernatorial (covering the years since he left the governor's office, 1963 to 1975), and visual materials.

The great bulk of the collection is the gubernatorial subgroup documenting the last months of Swainson's term as lieutenant governor under Governor G. Mennen Williams, the 1960 campaign for governor, his gubernatorial administration, and his unsuccessful campaign for re-election. The importance of the collection, as with all gubernatorial records, is its documentation of public policy issues of the early 1960s and the relationship of the governor to the legislature, to the heads of the state's various boards and commissions, to the federal government, and to the citizens of Michigan.

Papers include correspondence, diary, clippings, and photographs relating to his experience as a prisoner; correspondence relating to his Purple Heart award and the Prisoner of War medal. Also included a memoir by Sidney Esensten about his experience as an American P.O.W. during the Korean War.

Visual materials include photos relating to his experience as a prisoner; videotape entitled "P.O.W.--Americans in Enemy Hands" (1986), which includes interview with Fletcher; videotape of 1990 presentation by Fletcher and three Tuskegee Airmen, African American World War II aviators, describing their military experiences, and an undated videotape "Priority: P.O.W."