Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

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.

Donald G. Staebler was a farmer who worked on the Staebler Family Farm in Dixboro, Michigan. Staebler collected and preserved historical documents relating to the Staebler family. He used these records to write a history of the farm. The collection includes scrapbooks of photographs, correspondence, and other materials related to the family. Also included are Staebler's written notes and drafts of the farm's history.

The Donald G. Staebler papers contains his writings and research, as well as material documenting the Staebler Family Farm in Dixboro, Michigan. The first box holds four scrapbooks that includes photographs, newspaper clippings, and other collected records from members of the Staebler family. Within these scrapbooks are written histories of the farm and family to provide context for the documents.

The second box consists of additional collected family materials including diaries, correspondence, and other records related to members of the family like Helen Staebler Martin and Henry Staebler. This box also includes more of Donald Staebler's writings, and letters to his wife, Lena while he lived in England.

Baptismal records, marriage, birth and death records, photographs, newspaper clippings and printed histories detailing activities of this Indian church.

The records of the church date back to 1847 and include baptismal records, marriage, birth and death records, photographs, newspaper clippings and printed histories detailing activities of this Indian church. Most of the records are in Latin and Ottawa.

Correspondence and miscellaneous business papers including Civil War letters exchanged between John C. Buchanan and his wife, Sophia Bingham Buchanan, while he was serving as first lieutenant in Co. D. of the 8th Michigan Infantry. Many of the letters are almost sermons and philosophical essays about his home and family, religion, his country and the war and its leaders. Others are detailed descriptions of camps and camp life, such as Seabrook plantation in South Carolina and its Negroes, James Island and its reptiles; his quarters and food; sea transports; marches, skirmishes and battles with the Army of the Potomac in the Maryland campaign and around Fredericksburg. The collection also includes letters from Claude Buchanan while he was a student at the University of Michigan; letters (1847-1858) of J. Irwin Beaumont of Mississippi and Minnesota to Angie Bingham (Gilbert); notebooks, speeches, business papers, and a diary of a trip to the South in 1884 made by Claude Buchanan.

Pension papers and other materials concerning his military service; also letter from Lieutenant Charles D. Todd (located near Blaines Cross Roads, Tenn.) about sending Comstock's body home to Adrian, Michigan, from Knoxville, Tennessee, and miscellaneous papers of Lucia Comstock.

Founded in 1841, the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) is the liberal arts college of the University of Michigan, encompassing over 100 academic departments and non-departmental centers, programs, institutes, museums, and laboratories. The record group includes correspondence, meeting minutes, memoranda, reports, proposals, subject files, and program materials from the administrative offices of the dean and the academic units that make up the college.

The records of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) of the University of Michigan date from 1846 with the first meeting of the literary college's faculty. They now span more than a century and a half and comprise 549.4 linear feet (in 550 boxes), 3 volumes, and 169.9 GB of minutes, correspondence, memoranda, reports, and subject files detailing the activities of the college from its early beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century to its present status as the largest of the university's colleges.

The administrative records of the college have come to the library in six major accessions beginning in 1942 with small periodic accessions thereafter. In addition, the college has periodically deposited bound record copies of the minute books of the meetings of the LSA faculty. Covering the years 1846 to 2007, the minute books (oversize volumes, boxes 204 to 209, and box 388) are the most important source of information about the college, especially for the period before World War I because few other extant records document the activities of the university's liberal arts college.

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.

Papers of Helen B. Van Tyne and earlier members of the Belfield family. Civil War papers and family correspondence of Henry H. Belfield, founder of the Chicago Manual Training School; and papers, 1944-1971, of Helen Van Tyne, Ann Arbor, Michigan civic leader and member of the citizens advisory council of the Washtenaw County Juvenile Court, concerning her interest in the problem of juvenile delinquency, the Michigan League for Planned Parenthood, the Michigan Council on Women in Business and Industry, and the James Foster Foundation.

The papers of Helen Van Tyne consist of materials relating to two major areas: Mrs. Van Tyne's involvement in various Ann Arbor-area civic organizations from the late 1940s until the late 1960s, and a collection of family papers, photographs, and ephemera, particularly relating to her grandfather, Henry Holmes Belfield (1838-1913). The collection has been divided into three series: Organizational Affiliations, Personal Papers, and Belfield Family Papers.

Physician and first Dean of Women at University of Michigan. Correspondence, largely of a personal nature with her niece Sarah Searing; biographical information; scrapbooks with notes and letters about travels abroad; and photographs.

The collection consists of materials accumulated by Dr. Mosher's niece Sarah Searing. It includes both letters received from Eliza to her niece, general family correspondence, and other Mosher materials which came into Sarah Searing's possession upon the death of Dr. Mosher. The collection has been arranged into the following series: Correspondence; Personal and biographical; Writings, speeches and lectures; Miscellaneous; Travel; Clippings and scrapbooks; Realia; and Photographs.

Lumber and mercantile company of Chicago, Illinois and Traverse City, Michigan. Business records include minutes, correspondence, and financial ledgers, daybooks, and journals.

The records of Hannah Lay Company have been divided into three series: Hannah and Lay Company Business Records and Hannah, Lay Mercantile Company, and Master Negative Microfilm.

The history of the arrangement and appraisal of the Hannah and Lay records has been fully described in an article in the American Archivist (Jan. 1976) by Larry Steck and Francis Blouin.