2 linear feet
The record group consists almost entirely of minutes of the meetings of the organization dating from 1897 to 1970. There are, in addition, a scattering of programs, membership lists, and papers read at club meetings.
137 items
This collection consists of 137 items, including: 55 items relating to financial matters -- receipts, bank and stock records, subscription lists, etc.; 39 items relating to Beeson family history and genealogy, including handwritten notes, and a 33-page typed transcription; 11 letters written by members of the Beeson and Lukens family (related to the Beeson family by marriage); 2 travel journals; 1 daily diary; 1 oversized journal, containing entries on family history, genealogy, and travel; 6 maps, including one pasted onto the flyleaf of the oversized journal; 9 newspaper clippings; 6 legal documents; 7 miscellaneous items; and one unidentified photograph.
The majority of the financial documents consist of lists of stockholders and subscriptions for the Union Bank of Pennsylvania. One document, a receipt for glassware dated 9 August 1827, is written on the illustrated letterhead of the glass manufacturer Bakewell, Page & Bakewell, of Pittsburgh.
The history and genealogy notes concern the branch of the Beeson family that was instrumental in the founding and settling of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Two descendants of this branch, Edward Beeson and Jacob Beeson (b. 1807), contribute diaries and journals to the collection.
Jacob Beeson's 1829-1830 travel journal (with occasional notes in shorthand) relates, in brief but lively entries, a journey from Uniontown to New Orleans, to help an uncle in the mercantile business. While traveling by steamer down the Mississippi, Jacob Beeson gives colorful descriptions of his fellow passengers and shipboard events. "We had scarce went 500 yds. when we were rous'd by the cry of ‘a man overboard'--drop the Stern Boat, etc. I rais'd my eyes from the book & they were immediately fix'd on the face & arm of a Slave who had pitch'd himself from the Bow of the Boat. He was between the Steamer & her boat when I saw him. By the time he got to where I saw him, he appear'd tired of his sport. He gave a piercing scream & sunk amid the Billows. The Boat was dropped awhile for him but twas to no purpose." (27 March 1829) Jacob describes going to the theater in New Orleans (13 May 1829); the landscape and climate of the area east of New Orleans (8 September 1829); a visit to "Crabtown", at Bayou St. John, where Spaniards subsisted solely by fishing for crabs (23 May 1829); battling a forest fire (14 February 1829); and the inadequacy of his boarding house fare: "For dinner, we have the standby dish of bacon, venison, cornbreads and sour milk served in tea cups, handed round on a waiter that for aught I know to the contrary performed the same service prior to the Revolution. For Supper we have the remains of dinner with the addition of coffee that would be better off than on the table." (16 June 1829) He takes several business trips by boat along the gulf coast. The journal ends with a trip North up the Mississippi in early 1830. A later diary kept by Jacob Beeson in 1873 records the business and personal affairs of a now-settled business and family man living in Detroit Michigan.
Edward Beeson provides much of the family history and genealogy in the collection. His handwritten notes, both loose and in a large bound journal, chronicle Beeson family history and lore, and contain names, dates, and narratives of his direct ancestors, and sketchier details of the wider Beeson clan.
Edward Beeson is also the author of two interesting travelogues. The first is included in the journal he kept in an oversized volume, originally intended for shipping manifests for the shipping agent Monson Lockwood, each page headed with an illustration of ships and a lighthouse. In this journal, Edward recounts a trip he takes from Wisconsin west to Kansas in 1866. He describes the towns he visits on the way, and reflects on the scars left by the Civil War. In Aubry, on the Kansas/Missouri border, his Quaker sense of outrage at the violence perpetrated by both sides is aroused by the abandoned and burnt-out homesteads:
"At this place a cavalry camp was maintained during the greater part of the war. From here the lawless Jayhawkers often started on their thieving raids into Missouri and this was also made a place to be retaliated on by the equally desperate and thievish bushwackers and guerillas of Mo. …Here a voice raised for humanity, honor, mercy, justice or freedom of speech was made the occasion for suspicion, persecution, and defamation, often ending in the murder or robbery of the luckless men who dared to think or speak. These scenes of violence, and the always present danger of life and property, had the effect of almost depopulating the country. The graves of the victims of violence are scattered over the country. The bare chimneys of burned houses loom up on the prairie, monuments of vandalism and violence such as the world has seldom seen. They stand there in the desolate silence pointing upward to heaven -- upward ever -- as if to remind the victims of war who sleep in graves nearby, that mercy and justice alone is to be found above." (9 September 1866, p. 78).
Edward Beeson's second travel journal is an account of a trip to Italy, taken by Edward Beeson and his family in 1877-1878. While his daughter, Abbie Beeson Carrington, takes voice lessons, Edward observes Italian life and customs, largely in and around Milan, and is particularly struck by the overall poverty of the region. Edward reports on the Italian diet, domestic arrangements, attitudes toward religion, and local funeral customs. He is present in Rome for the funeral of King Victor Emmanuel II, and attends celebrations commemorating the 1848 Italian Revolution against Austrian rule.
Five of the maps in the collection are hand-drawn survey maps, likely of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, dated from 1830-1850, with one undated. The sixth map, an undated, hand-drawn map of Uniontown, labeling buildings of significance to the Beeson family, is pasted onto the flyleaf of Edward Beeson's oversized journal.
39 oversize volumes
The records of B. E. Muehlig's include cash books, ledgers, inventory record books, sales book, and bill register.
13 linear feet
The Ben East papers contain material dating from as early as 1935 and spanning the next 45 years of his career as an outdoorsman, writer, and conservationist with the bulk of the materials focusing on his career as an outdoor writer and editor. The collection is divided into five series: Editorial Copy, Personal Papers, Photographs, Publications, and Topical Files.
1 Linear Foot (1 record center box)
The Ben Hecht collection includes materials from the 1940s through 1963 and is divided into five series: Writing, Correspondence, Jenny Hecht, Rose Hecht, and Miscellaneous.
The Writing series, which comprises three-quarters of the collection, contains original manuscripts and notes authored by Hecht. The series is divided by genre into eight subseries: books, essays and articles, notes and treatments, poetry, published writing, scripts, short stories and miscellaneous. As most pieces are undated, materials within each subseries are arranged alphabetically by title as it appears on the piece. While the manuscripts included in the collection are generally for lesser-known or unpublished material, this collection provides a wealth of insight into Hecht's creative process. Particularly in the Scripts subseries, many works contain multiple drafts or include handwritten corrections.
The Books subseries contains a draft manuscript for Hecht's Perfidy (here titled Perfidy in Israel). Published in 1961, this controversial work reflected Hecht's growing anti-Zionism toward the end of his life, a stance that went against his earlier activism for Jewish causes. The Essays and Articles subseries holds five non-fiction pieces, including a letter criticizing the movie of The Diary of Anne Frank, for which Hecht's daughter Jenny was passed over for the title role.
Notes and Treatments includes a number of materials from Hecht's film and television work. Notable among these is a treatment for Miracle in the Rain, which was later produced as a film in 1956. Poetry consists of two poems that reflect some of Hecht's political views. Published Writing features an article Hecht wrote about Marilyn Monroe's death.
The largest collection of writing is contained in the Scripts subseries. It includes draft and final versions of nine separate projects, many with handwritten corrections. Not all were produced as films or plays, so these folders provide insight into some of Hecht's lesser-known work. Particularly interesting items in this subseries are the script for a musical version of Underworld, the screenplay for which Hecht won the first Academy Award for Best Original Story in 1927, and multiple drafts of Hecht's play Winkelberg, based on the life of his friend Maxwell Bodenheim.
Short Stories includes five examples of Hecht's fiction work, including handwritten pages for "Some Slightly Crazy People," which was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1959. The final subseries in the Writings series , Miscellaneous, has untitled writings and jottings, including one written on a torn piece of cardboard and another on the back of an envelope.
The Correspondence series features materials reflecting Hecht's professional and personal life. Materials within the collection are divided in two subseries, Business Correspondence and Personal Correspondence, and arranged chronologically within each subseries. Spanning the years 1946 to 1963, with the bulk of material from 1958 to 1959, the relatively small Business Correspondence subseries contains a number of letters describing negotiations for projects involving people ranging from Orson Welles to Marilyn Monroe. Several are from Hecht's agent Albert Lewis. This series also includes a letter from the American Broadcasting System announcing the cancellation of Hecht's short-lived television talk show The Ben Hecht Show, which ran from September 1958 to February 1959.
Personal Correspondence spans 1946 to 1963 and is further divided into three subseries. The largest, Fan Letters, includes over 40 letters from fans written between 1956 and 1961. Most were written in support of Hecht's appearance on The Mike Wallace Show in February 1958. Two smaller subseries, Letters to Ben Hecht and Letters to Ben and Rose Hecht, include letters and telegrams from acquaintances, relatives, and family friends.
The Jenny Hecht series includes material related to Hecht's daughter's appearance in stagings of the theatrical version of The Diary of Anne Frank at the Palm Springs Playhouse and the Tappan Zee Playhouse in 1959. The folder includes Jenny Hecht's contracts for the appearances, programs for the productions, newspaper clippings, congratulatory telegrams from family friends, and a card which accompanied flowers from her father. The folder also includes photographs from the productions.
The Rose Hecht series features correspondence to and from Hecht's wife spanning from 1945 to 1959 and arranged chronologically. Several of the letters written by Rose indicate her involvement in her husband's business affairs, including a plea to a congressman petitioning for changes to the tax laws which "unfairly" burden artists.
The Miscellaneous series is comprised of two folders. The first folder contains a list of Hecht's visitors from 1950, featuring such Hollywood personalities such as Kirk Douglas, Otto Preminger, David O. Selznick, and Harpo Marx. The second folder includes publicity materials for several of Hecht's publications, a posthumously awarded certificate for induction to the Chicago Journalists Hall of Fame, two untitled hand-drawn floorplans, and a photograph of a children's band marked "Rhythm Band 1947."
Approximately 2 linear feet
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.
The Egyptian figures may date to around 600 BCE.
2.5 linear feet
The Benjamin F. Graves papers consist of family correspondence concerning life in Battle Creek, Michigan, student life of H. B. Graves at the University of Michigan, 1879-1882, Kansas land speculation, 1883-1885, the Spanish-American War and legal affairs; personal journals and circuit court and Michigan Supreme Court record books of B. F. Graves; and correspondence of Henry B. Graves and Ann Lapham Graves. The collection has been arranged by name of individual family member: Benjamin F. Graves; Lapham family; Henry B. Graves; and Miscellaneous.
The correspondence of Benjamin F. Graves includes letters from Henry B. Brown, December 26, 1890; Julius C. Burrows, March 17, 1869; James V. Campbell, 1858-1883; Isaac P. Christiancy, June 1868, November and December 1862, February 1873, August 1877; Thomas M. Cooley (throughout); Donald M. Dickinson, undated and December 1883; Alpheus Felch, December 1894; and John W. Longyear, April 1864 and March 1865.
3 linear feet
1 linear foot
The Bennett Weaver collection is comprised of three series: Correspondence; Lectures, speeches, and addresses; and Miscellaneous. Most of the lectures and speeches concern Anglo-American poetry, the Bible as literature, and patriotic themes.