Search

Records of United States land offices in Marquette and Grayling, Michigan. Plat and tract books containing the record of the survey and sale of public lands in Michigan.

The records originally came from two sources. Volumes 1-51 and 78 to 87 (tract books for the Lower Peninsula) and the outsize folders (Lower Peninsula plat maps) are copies of earlier records made in 1894 for the Grayling Land Office. When that office was closed in 1898 the records were transferred to the Marquette Land Office. Volumes 52-77 and 88 (tract books for the Upper Peninsula) and volumes 150A-161 (plat maps for the Upper Peninsula) are the original records kept in the Marquette Land Office (originally in Sault Ste. Marie) beginning in 1847.

The records were transferred to the General Land Office in Washington, D.C., when the Marquette Land Office was closed in 1925. In 1940, the Auditor General of Michigan, who was the chairman of the Michigan State Land Office Board, accepted the records for the state. (The State Land Office Board was established in 1937, and was not related to the Michigan State Land Office, which was abolished in 1914 and replaced by the Public Domain Commission.) Because of crowded conditions in the State Capitol, the Auditor General asked that the records be deposited in the Michigan Historical Collections, where they could be used by a WPA Writers Project study of the disposal of public lands in Michigan. They have been on deposit at this library since that time.

Women's organization of the Michigan Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Michigan formed in 1919 through merger of the Michigan Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and the Michigan Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. papers include administrative files, annual reports, and minutes of committees and annual meetings

The records of the Michigan Synodical Society document its historical development, the administration of its business, its annual meetings, and its interests in missions, both foreign and home missions, from 1873 to 1973. These records document the beginnings of both the foreign (1873) and home (1879) missionary societies which eventually became the Michigan Synodical Society (1919). The bulk of the collection, however, covers the later period, 1942-1968.

University of Michigan student organization formed to build and manage a student union, sponsors a variety of social and service programs and activities, includes records of building and financial committees and various activity/organization files including the University Mimes and the Union Opera (later renamed MUSKET) and scrapbooks and photographs of Union activities.

The records of the Michigan Union measure 21 linear feet and 13 oversize volumes. The records date from 1890 to 1983, although there are some collected photographs dating as early as 1884. The collection has been divided into six series: Central Files, Activity/Organization Files, General Files, Photographs, Songs, and Board of Representatives.

State chapter of national temperance organization founded in 1874; records include correspondence of early W.C.T.U. workers, Alice E. H. Peters and Ella Eaton Kellogg; also minutes, scrapbooks, and other records of individual Michigan W.C.T.U. districts and chapters.

The Michigan Woman's Temperance Union records divide into seven series: Correspondence; Miscellaneous and Publicity; Printed Materials; District Records; County Union Records; Local Union Records; and Photographs. The records document the period of the Michigan WCTU's greatest influence, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the organization's gradual declining influence following the repeal of the prohibition amendment.

The Middle English Dictionary, a comprehensive dictionary of the English language as it was used between 1100 and 1500, was in production at the University of Michigan from 1930 to 2001. Collection contains 3 million citation slips used in compiling the Middle English Dictionary, including citations donated by Oxford English Dictionary and Cornell University in addition to those generated by systematic reading of Medieval English texts and manuscripts. Citations include vocabulary words along with context and notes concerning sources.

The Middle English Dictionary (MED) citation slips, over three million individual slips of paper, represent the raw material used in the compilation of the MED. The citations include the original slips donated by the Oxford English Dictionary and Cornell University as well as those generated through the MED project's reading program. Some 200 readers pored through Middle English texts, including Bibles, letters, diaries and legal documents. Scientific texts were also read in order to capture a technical vocabulary not appearing in literary texts. Words gleaned from these readings of Middle English texts were copied by MED staff, along with the context (a phrase or a sentence or two), onto slips of paper along with notes concerning the source of the citation. Each citation typically consists of a line or two copied onto a slip, or sometimes a whole paragraph or stanza cut from a copy of a book. The slips contain short titles assigned to the individual texts by the MED; these short titles may be found in the Middle English Dictionary Plan and Bibliography (1954), Plan and Bibliography Supplement I (1984), and the comprehensive 2nd edition of the Plan and Bibliography (2007).

The citation slips are organized alphabetically by headword. Originally the citation slips were stored at the MED facilities in some 900 boxes each 16 inches long and 8 1/2 inches wide. Each of the boxes could hold up to 4,000 slips. In 2001, prior to transfer to the Bentley Historical Library, the slips were reboxed maintaining their original order into archival storage containers. The archival boxes, smaller in length, expanded the box count for the citations slips to 1,137 boxes. An archival box normally contains a number of entries separated by cardboard guidecards, but occasionally, in the case of commonly used words, may contain only one.

In each entry the organization of materials is as follows (with slight variations--the order becomes more fixed as the alphabet goes on): (a) the copy used in the printed MED, with definitions written on yellow slips (with senses and subsenses indicated by numbers and letters where appropriate), followed by the citation slips in chronological order illustrating each sense and subsense; (b) spelling and form lists on pink slips, plus cut-up's from the OED entry as well as those in other dictionaries, along with the editor's and other notes; miscellaneous rejected citation slips preceded by a pink slip (usually those that are too late or too early, that are from other languages, or that cross senses); (d) rejected citation slips by sense and subsense, in chronological order, each preceded by a pink slip; (e) duplicate citation slips from the OED, preceded by a single pink slip.

The following inventory gives the beginning and ending headwords for each of the 1,137 boxes of citation slips. Abbreviations in the inventory are: adj.= adjective; adv.= adverb; art.= article; conj.= conjunction; cont.= continued; def.= definite; ger.= gerund; interj.= interjection; n.= noun; pl.= plural; poss.= possessive; pref.= prefix; prep.= preposition; pron.= pronoun; rel.= relative; suf.= suffix; sup.= superlative; v.= verb. Also, three Middle English characters are used in the headwords: æ, alphabetized as a + e; 3 (lower case), alphabetized between g and h; þ and ð, alphabetized as t + h.

The supplement slips were stored at the MED facilities in the same kind of boxes as the original citation slips, but were reboxed during the summer of 2001 into the smaller archival boxes, expanding the original box count of 18 to 27. The supplement boxes contain primarily supplementary quotations for already existing entries or quotations for new entries; in only a limited number of cases are there full-fledged edited entries like those in the printed MED or in the electronic MED.

NOTE: The contest list has been broken by letters to aid in navigation. Since boxes do not always break on a new letter, some words at the beginning of each letter may be in the previous box.

The Milan Area Historical Society collection consists of Visual Materials and Collected Historical Materials. The Visual Materials includes postcards and photographs of the Milan area dating from the 1860s to 2006. Also included are photographic negatives of Paul Holcomb who was both a private photographer and photographer for the Milan newspaper. The Collected Historical Materials includes documentation of area businesses, community events, prominent individuals and families, organizational records, high school materials, and newspaper clippings dating to 2008. A series titled 2018 Accessions includes additional overlapping materials from the Visual Materials and Collected Historical Materials series.

Membership applications containing biographical data and summary of military record; index to membership applications; membership register; minutes, 1901-1927; financial records, 1885-1931; library records; and twenty-six reminiscences and papers of Union veterans.

Correspondence (1865-1901), with letters about his Civil War activities (including one written on Dec. 29, 1861 from Camp Lebanon to his parents, which contains a description of his quarters and the accidental burning of his tent); also a record of labor accounts, 1872-1875, military service papers and miscellaneous election tickets and campaign ribbons. Correspondents include: Charles M. Croswell and Fred M. Warner.

Papers collected by Minnie C. M. Fay of Battle Creek, Michigan. Genealogical, and family records, and photographs.

The Minnie Fay collection consists of genealogical and family records, family photographs, and a diary, 1857-1858 probably of a Henry Chandler.

Publications produced by or for the Battle Creek Sanitarium founded by John Harvey Kellogg in Battle Creek Michigan.

The collection consists of pamphlets, brochures, articles and other printed material on the history, philosophy and dietary practices, and treatments of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.