Collections

This collection consists of correspondence and visual material related to Edwin O. Conklin, 1st Sgt., of the 1st Regiment Michigan Volunteer Sharpshooters. It also includes one typescript volume entitled, The Civil War Letters of Edwin Orville Conklin. Conklin described his encampment at Camp Chandler, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, service as a guard at the prisoner of war Camp Douglas, the Battle of the Wilderness, the Richmond-Petersburg campaign, and his capture at the Battle of the Crater. Conklin's letters contain reflections and observations on camp conditions, African-American soldiers, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Conklin's imprisonment at the Danville prisoner of war camp.

This collection consists of correspondence and visual material related to Edwin O. Conklin, 1st Sgt., of the 1st Regiment Michigan Volunteer Sharpshooters. It also includes one typescript volume entitled, The Civil War Letters of Edwin Orville Conklin. Conklin described his encampment at Camp Chandler, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, service as a guard at the prisoner of war Camp Douglas, the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, the Richmond-Petersburg campaign, and his capture at the Battle of the Crater.

Conklin's letters contain reflections and observations on camp life, food, marches, drill, cowardly officers, and recruiting in Michigan. At Camp Douglas, Chicago, 1863-early 1864, Conklin wrote about prison breaks, murder, camp conditions, invalid corps, and other subjects. In the summer of 1864, he provided his recipients with descriptions of areas around Annapolis; Washington, D.C.; Richmond; and Petersburg. After his capture, he wrote from the Danville POW camp.

Additional content includes brief remarks on African-American soldiers, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Ambrose Burnside, and others.

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 Mark A. Anderson collection of post-mortem photography contains approximately 1068 items including photographs, ephemeral items, documents, manuscripts, printed items, and realia pertaining to the visual history of death and bereavement between the 1840s and the 1970s. Photographs make up the bulk of the collection.

The Mark A. Anderson collection of post-mortem photography contains approximately 1068 photographs, ephemeral items, documents, manuscripts, printed items, and realia pertaining to the visual history of death and bereavement between the 1840s and the 1970s. Photographs make up the bulk of the collection. Mr. Anderson assembled this collection from dealers, antique shops, and individuals. His motivation stemmed from a desire to document and to provide historical perspective on various end-of-life practices which, in the 20th century, fell into taboo and disfavor.

The majority portion of the photographic items in the collection are neither dated, nor attributed, although approximate dates can often be determined by when particular photographic formats were in use (see timeline at www.graphicatlas.org.). Consequently, the materials have been organized first to accommodate their sizes, formats, and preservation needs, and second to reflect major subject themes present, though scattered, throughout the entire collection. These non-mutually exclusive subjects are as follows:

• Post-mortem portraits
• Post-mortem scenes
• Funeral tableaux
• Funerals and funeral processions
• Floral arrangements and displays
• Memorial cards and sentimental imagery
• Cemeteries and monuments
• Funeral industry
• Mourning attire
• Unnatural death

The first three subjects - post-mortem portraits, scenes, and funeral tableaux - all depict the recently deceased, and so fall into the narrowest definition of a post-mortem photograph. Their distinction into three separate subjects is a partly arbitrary decision, made to break up what would otherwise be a large and unwieldy grouping of photos, but also to roughly shape the order of the collection (post-mortem portraits without décor tended to date earlier chronologically than broader, beautifying scenes).

Post-mortem portraits:

The post-mortem portrait photographs, comprising 251 items in the collection, depict the bodies of dead family members and friends. These images show the deceased, sometimes posed with living family members, and for the most part do not include elements of a larger scene, such as floral arrangements, banners, or other décor.

These portraits include the earliest photographic images in the collection, including 28 cased daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. 78 cabinet card photographs date from the late 1860s to around the turn of the century. Among many notable cabinet cards are two images of Frances Radke, taken and retouched by R. C. Houser, showing her image before and after Houser's post-capture work (3.1 and 3.2). Also of note is a framed crayon enlargement of infant Adelaide Banks by photographer/artist Edward Stuart Tray (26) and a post-mortem carte de visite of an unidentified African American infant taken by photographer S. P. Davis of Danielsonville, Connecticut (4.282u).

Post-mortem scenes:

The post-mortem scene photographs, numbering 155 items in total, are similar to the portraits described above, except that they show the deceased as part of a larger environment, whether in a private home, a funeral home, or out-of-doors. Most of these views are mounted photographic prints from the 1880s to the early decades of the 20th century, frequently centering on the corpse, lying in a casket or coffin, amidst an abundance of floral arrangements, banners or flags, family members or friends, and/or personal belongings. Their caskets are often lined with white cloth.

Many of these images have unique qualities; several examples illustrate the variety of postmortem scenes in the collection. Six photographs by W. Jakubowski and Co. and Jos. Ziawinski, of Detroit, Michigan, include five wedding photographs (of the bride and groom, bridesmaids, and family members) and one post-mortem scene of the wife. She appears to have died within a short time following the marriage; the funeral home scene image contains one of the wedding photographs and a banner marked "Dearest Wife" (18.5-18.10). One mounted photograph depicts a dog, laid on linen, in a homemade casket (14:17). The collection also contains examples of different persons on display in the same funeral home/parlor (e.g. 18.1-18.4). A set of two cabinet card photos of a child in a buggy is accompanied by one of the buggy's metal lanterns (23.1-23.3). Also of note is a photogravure of the 1888 painting "Requiescat" by British artist Briton Rivière showing a dog seated next to its deceased owner (25.2).

Funeral tableaux:

The collection's 35 funeral tableaux photographs show the deceased in an open casket or coffin, typically in front of a church or homestead, with a posed assembly of funeral attendees or mourners. They often show a large group of family and friends, and so are frequently large format prints. Group portraits of this sort were occasionally framed and displayed in the home. Most of the examples in this collection are large prints (many of them mounted), with smaller examples, including a real photo postcard, two snapshots, and one cabinet card. Particular items of note include a framed tableau on the steps of the Church of The Descent of The Holy Ghost in Detroit by Thomas Hoffman (27), a photomontage image of a nun's funeral (28), two tableaux scenes by F. A. Drukteinis taken outside of the same church in Detroit during different seasons and involving the same family (20.12 and 20.15), and three related tableaux scenes (two mounted and one unmounted) involving a presumably Hungarian family that were taken outside of what appears to be a Catholic church in Cleveland, Ohio, during three different funerals (20.16a-20.16c).

Funerals and funeral processions:

The 70 items depicting or pertaining to funeral gatherings show various aspects of the movement of the deceased from the home or funeral home to the cemetery and funeral and burial ceremonies. This group is comprised of real photo postcards (22 items), snapshots (13 items), and a variety of other formats. Examples include an albumen print depicting the Plymouth Church decorated for Henry Ward Beecher's funeral in 1887, and snapshot and postcard photographs of a burial at sea.

Floral arrangements and displays:

Additional documentation of funeral decoration may be found in the collection's 176 still life portraits of floral arrangements and other decorations. A portion of the floral display photographs include pre- or post-mortem photos of the deceased either incorporated into the display or added to the image after printing. One particularly fine example is a large format photograph of a floral arrangement for the funeral of Joshua Turner Mulls; the display included a cabinet card photo of Mr. Mulls and a modified enlargement of the cabinet card. Accompanying the floral arrangement photograph is the cabinet card depicted in the display, with artist's instructions for coloring the enlargement (22.1-22.2).

Memorial cards and sentimental imagery:

The collection includes 105 memorial cards and ephemeral items bearing sentimental imagery. Memorial cards were created as tributes, often displaying birth dates, death dates, and other information about the deceased. Many of these cards include border designs and some bear photographs of the departed. Black-fronted memorial cards gained popularity from 1880 to 1905. Of many interesting examples, the collection includes two examples of memorial cards which haven't yet been personalized (4.306-4.307) and two reflecting World War I-related deaths (4.316 and 4.317). Materials with sentimental imagery include items such as a photograph of an illustration entitled "Momma is in Heaven," a memorial book dedicated to Olive C. Partridge in 1897, and other items.

Note: an advertisement for the Memorial Card Company of Philadelphia is located in the 'Funeral Industry' section of the collection (14.35).

Cemeteries and monuments:

61 photographs, printed items, and realia explicitly pertain to cemeteries, burial markers, or monuments. Some of the cemeteries and monuments are identified, such as the Garfield Memorial at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio (4.1-4.3). The collection includes examples of cemetery-related realia, including an ovular, porcelain headstone photograph (pre-mortem) of the deceased.

Note: cemeteries may be seen as background for many photographs throughout the collection.

The funeral industry:

The Mark A. Anderson collection of post-mortem photography holds a diverse selection of photographs, ephemera, and printed materials related to the business aspects of death, dying, and bereavement. This group contains around 153 items overall, including receipts (1896-1956); various types of advertising materials (including an undertaker's advertising card, a cabinet photograph of the Arbenz & Co. storefront advertising undertaking as a service, fans from a church and the A. C. Cheney funeral home, a thermometer, and other items); and 118 coffin sales photographs (illustrating a massive selection of different casket models offered by the Boyertown Burial Casket Company of Pennsylvania).

Two photograph albums, that of Clarence E. Mapes' furniture store and funeral home and that of the Algoe-Gundry Company funeral home, provide visual documentation of a rural and an urban funeral home (respectively) in Michigan in the first half of the 20th century:

The photo album and scrapbook of Clarence E. Mapes' furniture store and funeral home in Durand, Michigan, dating from ca. 1903-1930, contains interior and exterior photographs of the furniture and undertaker portions of the shop. The album includes photographs of casket showroom display mechanisms; an example of a "burglar proof" metallic vault; a posed photo of the embalmer standing over a man on the embalming table; images of carriage and motorized hearses; business-related newspaper clippings; and various family and vacation photographs. Several prints, dated August 1903, appear to depict the aftermath of the Wallace Brothers Circus train wreck on the Grand Trunk railroad at Durand. Among these photographs are carriage hearses, a horse-drawn cart carrying ten or more oblong boxes (for transportation and perhaps burial of victims of the wreck), a man standing in an alleyway near three stacked boxes, and a large group of persons standing in a largely unearthed section of a cemetery. The Mapes album is accompanied by a C. E. Mapes Furniture advertising fly-swatter.

The Algoe-Gundry Company album dates from ca. 1924 to 1960 and contains (almost exclusively) 8"x10" photographs of this Flint, Michigan, funeral business. The album includes images of the exterior and interior of Algoe-Gundry buildings, hearses, ambulances, and billboard advertisements.

One album was produced ca. 1939 by the Central Metallic Casket Co. of Chicago, Illinois. Titled "Caskets of Character," the album contains images of patented (or soon to be patented) casket designs as well as a printed cross-sectional view detailing the company's "Leak-Proof" Separate Inner Sealer.

Also of interest is funeral director's license granted by the Michigan State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors to Vincent J. George of Fowler, Michigan, in 1938. (25.1)

Mourning attire:

In America, mourning attire tended to follow trends set in Europe. The bereaved wore mourning clothing according to current fashion trends and societal expectations. Mourning clothing styles, often dark-colored and somber, depended on how close the mourner was to the deceased and local societal expectations. Seventeen portrait photographs show men and women wearing mourning attire without the deceased present. This group includes cabinet cards, a 1/9 plate ambrotype of an adult woman, two tintypes, and one carte-de-visite.

Note: persons wearing mourning attire may also be found scattered throughout the other sections of the Mark A. Anderson collection. While most are concentrated in the funeral photographs, mourners are also present in postmortem portraits, postmortem scenes, and cemetery photos.

Unnatural death:

43 photographs (mostly snapshots) depict "unnatural deaths," deaths not caused by age or naturally occurring disease, such as suicides, accidents, murders, and war. The larger portions of the snapshots are mid-20th century police photographs of crime or accident scenes.

Nine Indiana State Police photographs show a train-automobile accident; a group of eight unmarked photos depict the body of woman, apparently violently murdered, at the location of her death and in a morgue; 14 are of a man struck down, beneath a train; two are of a rifle suicide; and the others are of varying accidents. One World War I-era real photo postcard appears to show a man who was shot dead in a foxhole. A stereoscopic card by photographer B. W. Kilburn shows the burial of Filipino soldiers after the Battle of Malolos, Philippine Islands [ca. 1899].

Note: The photograph album/scrapbook of the Clarence E. Mapes furniture and undertakers shop contains several photographs of what appear to be the aftermath of the Wallace Brothers Circus train wreck, Durand, Michigan 1903 (see above description in the 'Funeral Industry' section of this scope and content note).