Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Files relating to Democratic Party activities (largely on microfilm); files relating to her interest in civil rights, fair employment practices, and her involvement with the Michigan and National Consumers League.

The Dorothy Smith McAllister collection consists of files relating to Democratic Party activities (largely on microfilm); files relating to her interest in civil rights, fair employment practices, and her involvement with the Michigan and National Consumers League. The collection has two parts: original manuscripts and papers that have been microfilmed. A portions of the Original Materials series also appears on the microfilm, but the microfilmed material is unique--not a part of the papers.

Grand Rapids, Michigan businessman and politician; correspondence, business papers; scrapbooks, and photographs.

The Frank D. McKay collection is divided into the following series: Correspondence; Topical Files; Business and financial papers; Newspaper clippings and scrapbooks; and Photographs.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, archivist; collected materials relating to local Democratic Party politics; student papers; and photographs.

The McNitt papers consist of materials collected relating to his interest in, and activities with, the local Democratic Party. Included are newsletters, leaflets, campaign materials and newspaper clippings concerning state, county, and municipal politics, particularly the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972, Ann Arbor City Council and school board elections; the New Democratic Coalition of Michigan; the Human Rights Party; the state presidential primary in 1972; Democratic state conventions; state elections in 1968, 1970, 1972, and 1974; and the election campaign of Congressman Richard F. VanderVeen in 1974.

The collection also includes copies of student papers on topics relating to Michigan history. The titles of these papers are "The Library Extension Movement in Grand Rapids", "Journalism and the Republican Party of Michigan, 1890-1920; A Study of the Michigan Republican Newspaper Association", and "Peace and American Society : Rebecca Shelley and the Peace Movement."

Finally, there are many hundreds of photographs taken by McNitt relating to the construction of the Bentley Library and to the accessioning of the papers of Gerald R. Ford.

The papers of the Merriam family of Grand Rapids and Holland, Michigan, reflect chiefly the business activities and leisure time interests of Warren Sturtevant Merriam, plant manager of Baker Furniture, Inc. of Holland and member of the Macatawa Bay Yacht Club. There is also some material concerning his father, the Reverend Charles Wolcott Merriam, his mother, Julia Sturtevant Merriam, and his wife, Helen Bell Merriam.

The papers have been divided into nine series: Baker Furniture, Inc., Macatawa Bay Yacht Club, Warren Sturtevant Merriam, Helen Bell Merriam, Charles Wolcott Merriam, Julia Sturtevant Merriam, Park Congregational Church, Grace Episcopal Church, and Photographs and Slides.

Photographs (positive and negative), slides, and transparencies taken by the company's photographers to document company activities, products, services, employees at work and at leisure, company exhibits and commemorations, and the response of the company to natural disasters and civil disturbances.

In 1993, Michigan Bell as a corporate entity was subsumed within the Ameritech Corporation. As a by-product of this reorganization and the downsizing resulting from it, the company agreed to deposit with the Bentley Historical Library its extensive archive of photographic images. Totalling approximately one million images, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company photo archive consists of negatives, copy prints, and color transparencies taken in the period since World War II (the bulk beginning in 1949). The collection does not include photos taken since 1983; interspersed throughout, however, are numerous images from before 1949.

The collection has been maintained in the order received with two principal series: Positives and Negatives.

The content of the photographs in the two series varies considerably. Naturally the collection documents the products of the company (phones and other communication devices) and the services provided (e.g. employees at work or the company reacting to a specific customer need). These photos were taken both to inform the general public as accompaniment to press notices and advertising copy and as a communications vehicle within the company, informing employees through the company news publication, Tielines, of activities going on in other divisions of the company or among the various regional Bell offices.

More importantly perhaps, the collection has value for its documentation of events and activities that are common to all large companies. These include images relating to: 1. The activities of employees within the corporation at their work (office workers, repairmen, operators, various support personnel, managers, etc.); 2. The activities of employees outside their work routine as members of corporate social groups (i.e., the company baseball or ice hockey team), at home engaged in leisure time activities, or involved in company-sponsored charitable or public service functions; and 3. Commemorations of specific milestones or events (company parade floats, area office open houses, corporate displays at public events such as fairs, etc.).

In addition, the collection documents the extraordinary and unforeseen as the phone company reacts to events and emergencies not within its control (floods, tornadoes, fires, the 1967 Detroit riot, strikes, and the like) or as a participant in history-making events (the announcement in Ann Arbor of the success of the Salk polio vaccine or the preparation involved in the 1980 Republican National Convention that convened in Detroit).

Papers collected in the Netherlands under the auspices of the Immigration Sources Project of the Michigan Historical Collections. Copies of letters and other materials of Dutch immigrants to Michigan written to friends and relatives in the Netherlands.

The collection of photocopied letters has been arranged alphabetically by the name of the city in Michigan which was home to the immigrant family, and thereafter by family name of. Most of these cities were in western Michigan.

Reports and administrative records of WPA project to survey historical records in Michigan; includes correspondence, drafts of guides to county archives, proceedings of county boards of supervisors, field reports of workers, and copies of land patents for some counties; also material relating to the history of Blacks in Michigan.

The Historical Records Survey record group documents the activities and the product of the legions of depression era workers who inventoried the records held in county courthouses, municipal offices some private repositories. The records include correspondence, drafts of guides to county archives, proceedings of county boards of supervisors, field reports of workers, and copies of land patents for some counties; also material relating to the history of Blacks in Michigan.

Originally the H.R.S. records transferred to the Michigan Historical Collections measured about 121 linear feet. After processing, the collection consisted of 26 feet of records relating to the H.R.S. and 65 feet of transcripts of county and municipal records. Of the remaining 30 feet, 29.5 feet of duplicate, extraneous, or insignificant materials were discarded (described in more detail further on) and approximately half of a linear foot of printed material was transferred to the library's printed collection.

The H.R.S. material has been divided into the following series:

1. Survey of County Records
2. Survey of Municipal Records
3. Survey of Federal Records
4. Survey of State Records
5. WPA Project Files
6. Manuscripts Survey
7. Inventory of Negro Manuscripts
8. Transcripts of County Records
9. Transcripts of Municipal Records
10. Photographs
11. Historical Records Survey Correspondence
12. Survey Forms of 1987 Survey of Records in Counties and Municipalities.

Advisory organization to Michigan local governments; correspondence, reports, and clippings and scrapbooks relating to organizational activities.

The records of the Michigan Municipal League include correspondence with city officials in the period of 1928-1929. These include Laird J. Troyer, mayor of Lansing, Alvah P. Cady, Benton Harbor city attorney, Earnest C. Brooks, mayor of Holland, and Ganson Taggart, Grand Rapids city attorney. There are also staff field reports, 1934-1947; and correspondence, 1944, of the Michigan Municipal Finance Commission, Tax Study Advisory Committee with letters of D. Hale Brake, Harry F. Kelly, George P. McCallum, and E. Blythe Stason. The scrapbooks of clippings are useful for their documentation of league activities.

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.

Editor and publisher of the Daily Tribune; scrapbooks of newspaper columns and editorials, and miscellaneous.

The collection consists of a miscellanea of correspondence, photographs, and biographical materials. There are also extensive files of his newspaper column "Personally Speaking" and the editorials he wrote for the newspaper.