Search

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.

• Kapitein Dick Op Zijne Shetland Poney: Op Verzoek Van Verscheidene Heeren En Dames, Zal Den Heer Broun Op Zaturdag Den 23 October 1830, Van 's Middags 1 Tot 's Avonds 10 Uren, Aan Het Geëerd Pupliek Ten Toon Stellen... Paramaribo: Ter drukkerij van de erven C.J. Fuchs, [1830].
• Royal Gazette of the United Colony of Demerary & Essequebo: Saturday, January 8, 1831. [Georgetown, Guyana: W. Baker, 1831].
• Royal Pavilion Circus in the Temple Yard: by Permission of His Excellency the Governor : On Thursday Evening Next the 22d Instant Mr. Brown and His Corps of Equestrians Will Have the Honor to Present to the Public a Splendid Performance, When He and His Company Will Endeavour to Gratify the Ladies And Gentlemen of the Island by Representing Various Extraordinary Feats of Horsemanship. [c. 1830?].

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.

The Florence Romaine collection is comprised of correspondence, documents, genealogies, photographs, scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings related to the Brossard, Draper, and Smith families throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and to the acting career of Florence Smith Romaine.

The Florence Romaine collection (1 linear foot) is comprised of correspondence, documents, genealogies, photographs, scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings related to the Brossard, Draper, and Smith families throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and to the acting career of Florence Smith Romaine.

The Correspondence series (59 items) contains personal letters between members of the Brossard, Draper, and Smith families; many are written in French. Most of the material is dated from 1843-1907; the collection also includes 3 early letters to members of the Brossard family, as well as postcards that Florence Smith Romaine wrote to Grace Maxwell from 1962-1963. The series includes letters to Claude Ferdinand de Brossard from various correspondents; to Ferdinand de Brossard and Jenny de Brossard Draper from their mother, Elizabeth de Brossard; to Elizabeth Brossard from her sister-in-law, Julie de Brossard; to Jenny de Brossard Draper from Seth Enos Smith; and to Florence Smith Romaine from her mother, Jenny Draper Smith, and grandmother, Jenny de Brossard Draper. Other items include 6 letters to C. C. Randall.

The Writings series consists of 3 items by Florence Smith Romaine: a rumination on night written around 1905, a play entitled "The Silver Bell of Hat-Shep-Sut's Cat," and Whistling Bill, a children's book published in 1937.

Documents are divided into three subseries: Legal Documents (7 items), Business Documents (3 items), and Awards and Diplomas (2 items). Legal documents include birth certificates, marriage certificates, and passports related to Claude and Elisabeth Brossard and their descendants, as well as a copy of Florence Smith Romaine's will. Business documents are related to Brossard family accounts. The award and diploma concern Jenny Draper's academic achievements at the Chegaray Institute and a Brossard family member's receipt of the Fleur de Lys.

The Photographs series has two subseries: Photograph Album and Loose Photographs. The photograph album (26 pages) contains 104 cartes-de-visite and tintype studio portraits, including portraits of members of the Brossard, Draper, and Smith families. Two pages from a photograph album of the Romaine family are housed separately. Loose photographs (32 items), including 2 cased items (one housed in the Graphics Division), mostly show Florence Romaine in theatrical costumes; several photographs show members of the Smith and Draper families.

Two Scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings, programs, notes, and other items regarding Florence Romaine's acting career, as well as articles, children's stories, and puzzles that she wrote for The Christian Science Monitor in 1924 and 1925. The Newspaper Clippings (3 items) concern the career of Worthington L. Romaine and the deaths of Seth and Seth E. Smith.

Genealogies and Family Histories consist of a pamphlet about the descendants of Henry and Elizabeth Smith, including Seth Enos Smith and Florence Smith Romaine; manuscript and typed notes pertaining to the Draper and Stull families and to the life of Florence Romaine; and pages from Thomas Waln-Morgan Draper's 1892 genealogy The Drapers in America.

Miscellaneous Items and Fragments (17 items) include notes and poetry (in French), 2 invitations, a copy of a recommendation letter for Father Marie-Joseph de Geramb to the governor of Cairo, and a promotional pamphlet for "Florence May Smith."

The Heinrich Family photograph collection is made up of a photograph album, loose photographs, correspondence, and other items pertaining to Eberhardt William Heinrich, and his parents, Bruno Otto Paul Heinrich and Helene Heinrich. The Heinrich family immigrated to Dubuque, Iowa, from Germany in the early 1920s. The photograph album contains photographs related to Bruno Heinrich's service in the German army in Eastern Europe during World War I. The remainder of the collection documents the family's immigration story, life in the United States, and later trips to Germany.

The Heinrich family photograph collection consists of 1 photograph album, 102 loose photographs, 4 letters, 1 passport, 76 postcards, 18 loose album pages, and 1 ceramic beer stein relating to the family of Eberhardt William Heinrich. The collection depicts the life of a German soldier during World War I and the immigration of a middle-class German family to the United States between the wars. Eberhardt Heinrich compiled the materials and wrote a brief family history, two copies of which are included in the collection.

The photograph album (13cm x 19cm) of Eberhardt Heinrich's father, German soldier Bruno Heinrich, contains 101 photographs and photographic postcards related to Bruno Heinrich's army service in Eastern Europe during World War I. Captions in English, added later by his son, identify people, locations and dates. The volume has a red cloth cover with a printed iron cross on the front, dated 1914. Bruno Heinrich's Iron Cross medal is placed in a clear plastic envelope inside the volume's front cover.

The Bruno Heinrich album shows individual and group portraits of German soldiers playing cards, resting in earthwork bunkers, in trenches, drinking, sitting by large artillery pieces, posing in ruined buildings, and mounted on horseback. Several photos are posed with local residents or refugees; one image features captured armored tanks. Most of the photographs were taken in Serbia, Poland, and Russia, though a few came from France and Germany. Although many of the photographs show soldiers and civilians at leisure, others depict the devastation and the humanitarian crisis created by the war. Images of note include a photograph captioned "Waking up in the ditch after a party;" a German cemetery of fresh graves and birch wood crosses; soldiers displaying a captured Serbian banner; Heinrich in a domestic interior with his rifle, hat, and "bridal picture" on the wall behind him; and a view of a Russian cloister with a large crowd of civilian refugees. Photographs at the end of the album depicting Bruno Heinrich and his brothers-in-law Paul Hobach, Heinrich Hobach, Richard Albert, and Willi Osterloh, who served on the Western front, may have been added later.

The loose photograph series includes 102 photographs arranged by subject matter, dating between 1910 and 1979. Some photographs have manuscript captions in English and German on the verso. A majority of the images show the families of Bruno Heinrich and of his wife, Helene, and of a young Eberhardt Heinrich. Family members are often identified on the verso. Also included are photographs of the family's immigration to the United States, crossing the Atlantic aboard the German steamship SS Yorck, and trans-Atlantic voyage to Germany in 1930 onboard the German ocean liners SS Bremen and SS Europa. Images depict groups and individuals onboard ship and views taken of the ocean en route. Also included are snapshots taken at the University of Michigan's geological field station in Wyoming, Camp Davis; plus other images of travel and family life in Dubuque, Iowa. Of note are three photos taken on separate dates of Bruno Heinrich, Helene Heinrich, and Eberhardt Heinrich, each posed atop a camel in front of the Great Sphinx and the pyramids at Giza in Egypt.

The collection's manuscripts consist of four letters and one passport. Three manuscript letters are written in German on business letterhead; two dated June 16, 1910, and one dated March 13, 1911. The latter includes two recipes written in English on the verso. One letter, in English, is dated July 29, 1985 and typewritten on Ann Arbor News letterhead. The United States passport was issued to Helene Heinrich on March 21, 1960, and tracks her travel to numerous countries around the world throughout the early 1960s.

The collection of postcards contains 76 lithographic and photomechanical souvenir postcards from Germany and the United States dating from the early to mid-twentieth century. Some notes inscribed on the verso are written in English and German and may have been added by Eberhardt William at a later date. A majority of the postcards depict German cities visited by the Heinrich family in 1930. Also included is a group from Chicago, Illinois museums; and a group of "Bonzo" dog cartoons by George E. Studdy. Of note is a group of sentimental postcards of German soldiers from the World War I era; a photographic postcard of Eberhardt William and Helena Heinrich aboard the SS Yorck during their immigration from Germany to the United States in 1923; and a souvenir postcard from Bremen, Germany featuring a colored lithograph of a traveler with a rucksack. A paper flap under the rucksack lifts to reveal a miniature accordion-fold viewbook of Bremen scenes.

The loose album pages series includes 18 loose pages separated into five groups dating from 1923-1964. Pages were likely previously part of compiled albums though no longer extent. Captions in English and German may have been added by Eberhardt Heinrich at a later date. Group 1 includes photographs taken aboard the SS Europa, during the October 1930 trans-Atlantic voyage from Bremerhaven, Germany to the United States. Images include photographs taken from the ship and from shore at Bremerhaven, Germany, including dramatic photographs of large seas taken from the ship's deck. Group 2 is primarily commercial photographs from the family's 1930 trip to Germany depicting Bremen; the Breitachklamm gorge, and towns of Sonthofen and Oberstdorf in the Allgäu region; Berlin; and the Spreewald. Group 3 features photographs of East and West Berlin taken in October 1963 by Helena Heinrich. The final two groups are photographs of a family visit to the gravesite of Julian Dubuque in Dubuque, Iowa, August 1964, and a trip to the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair in October 1940.

The final item in the collection is a half-liter ceramic regimental beer stein with a decorative pewter lid. The family history included in the collection notes that the stein belonged to Helena Heinrich's brother-in-law, Willi Osterloh, a member of the Kaiser's Garde-Kürassier-Regiment. The stein, manufactured by the Mettlach factory of Villeroy and Boch, with a production date of 1895, is decorated in the PUG (Print Under Glaze) style. It is inscribed with "Garde-Kürassier-Regiment" and depicts Garde-Kürassier-Regiment soldiers both standing and astride horses. The soldiers wear the normal service uniforms and the parade uniforms of the regiment. The pewter lid has a cast eagle thumb lift and is decorated with the seal and motto of the Order of the Black Eagle: "Summ Cuique."

The Marion E. Grusky Rucker Collection contains materials reflecting on her service in the United States Navy Reserves from 1943 to 1961, her naval training and education, her promotions from ensign to lieutenant commander, and her work as a teacher and career consultant. A personal narrative describing her naval training exercise in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1945 and other items reflect aspects of sexism in the military during and following the Second World War.

The Marion E. Grusky Rucker Collection contains materials reflecting on her service in the United States Navy Reserves from 1943 to 1961, her naval training and education, her promotions from ensign to lieutenant commander, and work as a teacher and career consultant. A personal narrative describing her naval training exercise in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1945 and other items reflect aspects of sexism in the military during and following the Second World War.

The Correspondence Series contains letters sent to Marion E. Grusky Rucker, principally written in the 1950s and concerning her naval appointments, her coursework, and teaching opportunities, including her year abroad teaching with a Fulbright Scholarship. Several letters relate to her release from active duty and its impact on her coursework at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1953. One letter written by Donald Rucker to his mother announces his upcoming marriage to Marion E. Grusky. One undated letter written by Rucker's granddaughter is also present.

The Documents Series includes materials relating to Rucker's naval career, including personnel paperwork concerning her appointments, promotions, education, leaves and discharges, retirement, and other matters. The series also contains various instructions and orders, and authorization to wear the American Campaign Medal and American Theatre Victory Ribbon. The partially printed document appointing Rucker as a Reserve Officer at the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy in October 1956 uses male pronouns, indicating gendered expectations for the officer class. Personal affairs are also reflected, including her birth certificate, the official change of her last name to Grusky in 1948, her work permit allowing her to teach in England in 1958, and her resume. Three passports date from 1958, 1970, and 1975.

The Writings Series consists of typed accounts, speech notes, drafts, and a eulogy. Two accounts produced by Rucker and her colleague Dorothy Weeks on September 14, 1945, detail a trip to Norfolk, Virginia, to attend training exercises aboard the U.S.S. Beverly Reid. They discuss how they circumvented sexism to secure travel arrangements to Norfolk, their accommodations, and observations of the ship and its crew. In Rucker's account she wrote, "The day before I called and called trying to get reservation on the Nats, but all I got with my feminine voice was the run around. Being persistant [sic] and determined, I had a man lend us his voice to persuade the WAVE that we had to have passage on the 4:30 Plane. Being a man, his charm did the trick and we were put on the list." She also referred to other instances of gender and sexism. She also noted the captain showing her and Weeks a scrapbook that included photos, notes, and souvenirs relating to his tours, including photographs of women. The captain took their photo without warning, and Rucker reflected, "I suppose that we will be added to the collection." The later typed version of Rucker's account includes an additional page of reminiscences about her service as a USNR Communications officer, with a final thought that, "A male first name may have permitted me to be sent (to the amusement of my CO) on some unusual assignments. i.e. being aboard a submarine and other small craft while on training maneuvers with rarely another WAVE in the group." Weeks' account parallels Rucker's, offering different details and perspectives on their assigned mission.

The speech notes reflect Rucker's consulting work focusing on women, especially teachers, their career development, goal-setting, and self-appraisal. Other notes document Rucker's biographical events, listing out employment, her work undertaken as a Fulbright Scholar, and places she lived.

Lee Rucker Keiser's eulogy for her mother is included, entitled "A Four C's Woman of the World," commenting on Rucker's life and their relationship.

The Diary Series consists of one volume Rucker maintained during her year teaching in Norwich, England, from 1958 to 1959, describing daily life, work at the school, visits with her husband Donald who was working at the University of Birmingham, and travels in Europe during vacations. A list of her cash account for the year and a list of school vacations for herself and Don are also present, and two photographs of Rucker are laid in to the volume.

The Printed Materials Series includes a copy of The Buckeye Way: A Unique Guide to Columbus and Franklin County (1974), written by Marion Rucker and Anne Lapidus, with a newspaper clipping about the publication laid in. Newspaper articles concerning Rucker's naval career, a copy of her obituary, and a printed family memorial booklet produced following her death are also present.

The Photographs Series consists of 15 photographs. They depict Marion E. Grusky Rucker in uniform, both in formal portraits and informal snapshots with colleagues, at an Officer's Club dinner at Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and in her doctoral robe at her graduation from the University of Michigan in 1963, as well as several personal photographs.

The United States Presidents collection contains materials authored by, signed by, or related to presidents of the United States of America.

The United States Presidents collection consists of single items authored by, signed by, or related to presidents of the United States of America. Including personal correspondence, land deeds, official appointments, and various manuscript and printed documents, the United States Presidents collection touches broadly on presidential politics, social activity, and national affairs from 1784 to 1992.

• A manuscript description of an exchange between a Revolutionary War soldier and Andrew Jackson in 1832, in which Jackson was presented with a candle originally used to commemorate General Charles Cornwallis's defeat, intending that he should now use it to honor the victory at the Battle of New Orleans
• A handwritten eulogy for President Benjamin Henry Harrison, describing his life, career, and character
• Three letters by William Howard Taft, documenting the legal dispute over whiskey production in 1909
• Nine letters written by Herbert Hoover to Wilson W. Mills between 1923 and 1952, relating to Michigan banks, and state and national politics
• Eight Associated Press teletypes reporting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963

The United States Presidents collection contains a diverse array of materials that reflects broadly on personal, presidential, and national affairs. See the Detailed Box and Folder Listing for more information about each item.