Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

Carr-Stearns family of Whitehall, Muskegon County, Michigan, and Ypsilanti, Washtenaw County, Michigan; family correspondence, including Civil War materials.

The collection includes letters, diaries, and a memoir of Ezra Stearns relating to his Civil War service. There are also letters and other miscellanea of Marvin S. Carr written while a student at Michigan State Normal College, Ypsilanti, and later as a cadet at the United States School of Military Aeronautics at Champaign, Ill., Dallas, Texas, and Mount Clemens, Michigan during World War I. The photographs in the collection are of the family farm, with some high school photographs made in Whitehall public schools.

Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan, area family; correspondence, diaries, and other family materials.

The Campbell family collection includes correspondence and other family materials. Items of interest include Civil War correspondence of Gabriel Campbell and John S. Farnill; correspondence, diaries, and teaching materials of William Campbell; personal correspondence of Mary and Sarah (Sadie) Campbell concerning farming, local Republican politics, and school affairs; and printed materials concerning the Free Silver question and the election of 1896. The papers of Robert C. Campbell include diaries and University of Michigan student notebooks. Of interest are the notes he took from the lectures of John Dewey in philosophy, Henry Carter Adams in political economy, Burke A. Hinsdale in pedagogy, Joseph B. Steere in zoology, and A.A. Stanley in music, among other professors. The collection also includes high school notebooks of Carrie Read and E. Mabel Read.

The collection consists of an autobiography, portraits, and a steel engraving plate. His personal recollections of his and his division's part in the war were written for his family. The chapters include: "Preliminary--Enlistment--Rendezvous"; "Going to the Front"; "Washington to Fredericksburg"; "Fredericksburg, "with a vivid description of the "bloody and lamentable" battle of Fredericksburg, and an analysis of McClellan as a general; "From Fredericksburg to Louisville, "with an explanation of the demoralization of Col. A. W. Williams; "Louisville to Horse Shoe Bend," with an account of the squabble between Colonel Doolittle and Colonel Mausar over slaves to be or not to be returned to their owners, and the issuing of the paper Union Vidette; "The Battle of Horse Shoe Bend, Ky."; "Down the Mississippi to Vicksburg" and "The Jackson Campaign"; "From Mississippi to Tennessee" and "East Tennessee Campaign" with "The Battle of Campbell Station"; "Siege of Knoxville"; "The assault on Fort Saunders"; "some Incidents of the Siege of Knoxville"; "After the Siege of Knoxville"; "East Tennessee to Virginia" and "Back to the Army of the Potomac"; "Through the Wilderness"; "To Ny River and Spottsylvania"; "Hospital Experience"; "In Front of Petersburgh" and "The Battle of the Crater"; "Incidents of the Battle of the Crater"; "After the Crater"; "Weldon Railroad and Ream's Station." "Poplar Springs Church and Beyond"; "Peebles Farm to Fort McGilvery"; and "The Winter in the Petersburg Trenches."

Architectural photographer based in Troy, Mich. Photoprints and copy negatives, chiefly a portfolio entitled "Man's Presence," a study of Michigan's manmade environment.

Representing but a tiny fraction of Korab's oeuvre, the collection held at the Bentley Library will nevertheless appeal to a broad range of researchers. Especially in a collective sense, Korab photographs are not only about architecture and architectural photography, but also about art, technology, modernism, photography's history, the environment, urbanism, ruralism, and the creative process itself. They also document one individual's spirited commitment to a life's work -- work expressed both analytically and emotionally.

The essence of the collection is a Korab portfolio entitled Man's Presence, a study of Michigan's man-made environment that drew him to dozens of towns, cities and rural areas in the upper and lower peninsulas. Photographs capture the quiet magnificence of silos and barns, the elegance of 19th century mansions, the utilitarian architecture of iron foundries and grain elevators. There are also pictures depicting ways man has wasted resources (an abandoned lumber mill, a barren tract of bulldozed land. A superb example of Korab's lifelong fascination with vernacular architecture, Man's Presence is a deliberate effort to capture on film Michigan worlds that otherwise might go unnoticed or become lost to future generations.

The collection is comprised of three series: Biographical Materials; Man's Presence Contact Sheets; and Man's Presence Copy Prints and Copy Negatives.