Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Episcopal student chaplaincy established in 1945 as the Episcopal Student Foundation to minister to University of Michigan students. The activities of the ministry were centered in Canterbury House (various locations). The Canterbury House ministry functioned both as a coffee house and as a performance hall for folk and jazz artists. The record group divides into three series. History and background materials include histories, promotional materials, and newspaper articles. The Episcopal Student Foundation Board of Trustees series consists of minutes, financial records, correspondence, and files relating to building facilities. The Canterbury series documents non-administrative activities, including staffing, chaplain activities, and programs and performances sponsored. This series also includes photographs, sound recordings, and files relating to the Institute of Public Theology and the conferences sponsored by it.

The Canterbury House records contain the records of the Episcopal Student Foundation and the Canterbury House, the Episcopal Campus Church at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The records are divided into four series, History and Background Materials, Episcopal Student Foundation Board of Trustees, Staff, and Canterbury.

The First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan, was organized and established on March 23, 1847. Records include administrative files, subject files, published material, and both visual and audio-material.

The records of the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor have been divided into the following series: History/Background Information; Administration; Financial Records; Church Organizations; Topical Files; Miscellaneous later records; Photographs; Publications; Phonograph records; and Reverend Terry N. Smith. The records document church administration, membership activities, and the relationship of the church to its denomination and to other area churches. Included are records of communicants, baptisms and marriages (1873-1905); pew subscriptions and accounts (1878-1939) and other membership information; church bulletins and newsletters; minutes and reports of the board of trustees, board of deacons, church council, and various subcommittees; records of men's and women's church groups such as the King's Daughters, the Ladies Aid Society, the Women's Fellowship Society, and the Women's Foreign Missionary Society; records relating to the church's affiliation with the Ann Arbor-Washtenaw Council of Churches; files pertaining to the proposed merger of the Evangelical and Reformed Church with the Congregational Church in the 1950s; and materials documenting the work of Reverend Terry N. Smith.

Ecumenical Christian campus ministry at the University of Michigan. Records include correspondence, minutes, financial reports, annual reports, newsletters, photographs, audio-tapes; materials concerning University of Michigan religious organizations, including Office of Religious Affairs, the Association of Religious Counselors, Student Religious Association, the Interfaith Center, and the Protestant Foundation for International Students; also files on other religious organizations, especially the Ann Arbor Bible Chair, the Michigan Christian Foundation of the Disciples of Christ; and papers concerning Ann Arbor churches, particularly the Bethlehem Evangelical Church, the First Congregational Church, and the Memorial Christian Church.

The records of Guild House have come to the library in different accessions dating from the 1970s. Covering the period from the 1920s to the 2000s, the records document the different roots of the modern Guild House. Besides correspondence, financial reports and annual reports, the record group includes the student newsletter The Microphone, as well as various reports of retreats, banquets, luncheons, and discussion sessions.

Because the members of the Guild House were so active, the record group includes materials on social issues such as civil rights, disarmament, diplomatic recognition of China, apartheid, and social and political issues in Central America. For a view of the Vietnam War peace movement and other political issues the collection of J. Edgar Edwards, director and campus minister of the Guild House from 1957 to 1973, should be consulted. This collection has been separately cataloged.

There are also numerous sound tape recordings of Guild House programs and meetings, a microfilm copy of the record book of the Upper Room membership under H.L. Pickerill's predecessor Thomas Iden, photographs, and scrapbooks.

More specifically, the record group has been arranged into the following series: Church Campus Ministries; Guild House Organizational Records; Related Organizations; Publications and related; Directors; Photographs, Scrapbooks, and Sound Recordings. The strength of the collection is its documentation of Guild House's involvement in significant social and political issues of the 1950s-2000s.

Ann Arbor, Michigan Episcopal Church; vestry and parish records, liturgical materials, Christian service and educational materials, administrative records, printed material, and photographs.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church has created a rich body of material which documents both its own history and its place within the history of Ann Arbor. The records of the parish have been arranged into nine series: Vestry; Registers; Church Programs; Administrative Records; Scrapbooks; Diocese of Michigan and other non-parish material; Liturgical Materials; Publications; and Photographs.

Catholic chapel (later parish) ministering largely to University of Michigan students. Council minutes, correspondence, topical files, chapel bulletins, and financial records; also files relating to the Gabriel Richard Foundation, the Newman Club and the Newman Student Association; and photographs.

The records of St. Mary Student Parish are divided into seven series: (1) St. Mary Chapel administrative files; (2) Gabriel Richard Center records; (3) Newman Club records; (4) Topical files; (5) Newsletters; (6) Photographs, Scrapbooks, and Albums; and (7) 2011-2014 Accessions.

St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church, founded in 1842 in Freedom Township, near Ann Arbor, Michigan; record group includes church registers, financial records, administrative materials, and other subject files.

The St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church record group includes church registers containing family and membership information; financial ledgers; constitutions and by-laws; anniversary and celebratory materials; files relating to church organizations; and photographs of church building.

Lifelong member of Zion Lutheran Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Aprill served for several years in the 1990s as a member of the Church's Executive Board. Papers include files relating to the history of Zion Lutheran Church, including a conflict within the church in the mid-1990s.

The Theophil Aprill collection contains two series relating to his activities with Zion Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. These series are Zion History and the Conflict at Zion.

Church originally established by German immigrant families to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Quarterly and annual reports of the church, records of church boards and commissions, Sunday School minutes and reports, subject files, publications, visual materials, and sound recordings.

The West Side United Methodist Church (Ann Arbor, Mich.) record group contains all extant records of the West Side United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor from its founding as the Erste Deutsche Methodisten Kirche in 1847 up to the 1990s. All records dating prior to World War I are in German, those from later time periods are in English.

Records from the German period are not complete, but do include quarterly conference meeting minutes (1847-1867 and 1883-1916), official board minutes (1897-1908), Sunday School board meeting minutes (1876-1915), Sunday School attendance and contribution records (1901-1918), a record of baptisms (1857-1901), minutes of meetings of the leaders (1901-1908), Epworth League minutes (1900-1917), and records on receipts and expenditures (1879-1893).

Records from the years since World War I vary in completeness depending on the time period. Records from the years prior to the move to the church on Seventh Street in 1952 are less complete than those for the most recent decades. For the period from World War I to 1952, the collection contains quarterly conference reports for most years; official board minutes (1922-1931 and 1944-1952); Board of Christian Education minutes and correspondence (1943-1952); Ladies Aid/Women's Society for Christian Service records (1935-1952); Sunday School board minutes and records on attendance, contributions, and expenditures (1923-1952 - incomplete); letters from former pastors and their wives upon celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Jefferson Street church (1934); photographs of the church building and activities of the congregation, yearbooks (1946-1952), and correspondence concerning the sale of the Jefferson Street church and the construction of the Seventh Street church (1949-1952).

The records for the years since 1952 are relatively complete and quite extensive. Included are quarterly (more recently annual) conference reports, minutes and correspondence of major boards and commissions (Administrative Council, Board of Trustees, Education, Evangelism, Finance, Memorials, Council on Ministries, Missions, Nominations, Outreach, Staff-Parish Relations, United Methodist Women, and Worship) plus various short-lived temporary committees and task forces, correspondence chronological files, subject files on special projects and events, church newsletters, Sunday bulletins, directories, and photographs of the church building and activities of the congregation.

The record group is arranged in six series: Quarterly and Annual Reports, Boards and Commissions File, Sunday School File, Topical File, Publications File, Photographs File, and Audiotapes, Films and Video.

Researchers interested in baptismal and marriage records should contact West Side United Methodist Church.