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Dexter, Michigan, collector of materials relating to the history of railroading in Michigan. Correspondence, subject files, printed matter and photographs; contain material concerning the Ann Arbor Railroad, the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, the Manistee and Northeastern Railway Company, the Michigan Central Railroad, the Pere Marquette Railroad, and Ephraim Shay.

The Stoner collection contains about 3,600 photographs and negatives collected by Stoner, relating primarily to Michigan railroads. The collection also contains related manuscript materials.

Stoner's major collecting interests were in the Ann Arbor, Grand Trunk Western, and Pere Marquette Railroads and their predecessors, and in logging railroads, especially Ephraim Shay's railroad and others using Shay locomotives. Along with these lines, the collection contains photos of dozens of other railroads, not all in Michigan.

The photographs most commonly depict locomotives, often with their crews posed beside. Other common subjects are railroad stations (exteriors only), train wrecks, trains in motion, logging operations, carferries, railroad bridges, the Detroit-Windsor railroad tunnel, and street railroads.

Dozens of Michigan cities and towns and a number of places in other states are represented in the collection. Places depicted most often in the photos include Ann Arbor, Cadillac, Detroit, Durand, Frankfort, Harbor Springs, and Howell, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario.

The collection is organized into seven series: Classified photos, Unclassified photos, Albums, Unclassified negatives, Papers, Classified negatives, and Duplicate material.

Appended to this finding aid are two indexes, one for railroads and company names, the other for subjects. The indexes contain references to all items in the Classified photos, Unclassified photos, Albums, and Unclassified negatives series.

The index to railroads and company names indexes logging and industrial companies that operated railroads, as well as railroad lines themselves. It does not index locomotive manufacturers, nor does it index the names of railroad museums where some of the photos were taken.

The index to subjects indexes place names and topical subjects. It does not index the term "locomotives" since the majority of the photos in the collection would be indexed under that heading. Place names are indexed if the photo includes a view of some part of the place or of some event at the place. Close-up views of locomotives that do not show any background are not indexed by place, even if the description of the photo identifies where it was taken.

The collection mostly documents Michigan railroads, focusing on the Ann Arbor Railroad Company (AARR), related lines, and its ferries in many formats. Also included are some organizational records of the Ann Arbor Railroad Technical and Historical Association (AARTHA).

Collection, collected over time by Don Wilson, some of which he was given by other rail fans. The collection mostly documents Michigan railroads, focusing on the Ann Arbor Railroad Company (AARR), related lines, its reorganization, abandonment, and its ferries. Some ferry information is general such as Twin Screw Specs (Box 5), and there is information specific to the M.V. [Motor Vessel] Viking (originally Ann Arbor No. 7) and the City of Milwaukee. Formats include slides, photographs, negatives, photograph printing plates, blueprints, scrapbooks, photograph albums, speeches, notes, newspaper clippings and magazine articles, maps, digital scans and positive prints from those scans, a CD, and miscellaneous, related publications. Also included are some organizational records of the AARTHA. Other railroads documented to various degrees in the collection include: Central Michigan Railroad (CM); Detroit, Caro and Sandusky Railroad (DC and S); Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton Railroad; Grand Trunk Railway (GT); Green Bay and Western Railroad; H and E Railroad [probably the Huron and Eastern]; Manistique and Lake Superior Railroad; Michigan Interstate Railway Company; Michigan Northern Railway Company; Mid-Michigan Railroad; New York Central Railroad (NYC) and St. Louis Railroad (SLRR); New York Central State Railroad (NYCS); Norfolk and Western Railway Company; Northwestern Pacific Railroad; Penn Central Railroad; Southern Pacific Transportation Company; Tuscola, Saginaw Bay Railroad (TSBRR); Toledo, Owosso, and Flint Railroad (TOandFRR); Wabash Railroad, and Wisconsin Central Railroad.

Items of special interest to researchers may include: manifests of the M.V. Viking, February-August 1976, and AARTHA bylaws, meeting minutes, newsletter information, member lists, and other information (Box 1); reorganization information (see Vincent M. Malanaphy folders (Boxes 2, 4), Michigan Interstate Railway Co. and MI Rail System Rationalization Plan information (Box 4), AARR photographs (Boxes 2-3), Pamona Derailment Negatives, undated (Box 5).

Photographs, negatives, and history of a plethora of railroad related topics are found throughout the collection. There are three slide boxes and two note card boxes full of slides on railroads (Slide Boxes 1-5).

Blueprints include line, lever circuit controllers, and station design plans, styling and painting design, system maps, tracks and structures, equipment, station and train car blueprints, and property drawings.

The 2016 addition, Boxes 14-16 and Folder #21 (legal-size), 1.5 cubic feet from Don’s friend Don Maddock was organized by Maddock into the series of Abandonment Petitions and Michigan Interstate Era. Included are paper documents, scans and positive prints of some of Wilson’s negatives, a few other topical files, a CD, and three color photographs. The addition largely documents the reorganization and end of the AARR. Sale papers for the City of Milwaukee are included. Most of the 2019 addition papers are copies. Note: 2016 addition negatives are housed in print file negative preservers, not archival negative sleeves.

Researchers may be interested in knowing that there are several collections and many publications by and about the Ann Arbor Railroad in the Clarke, as well as other collections and published sources documenting other railroad companies.

Processing Note: The collection is organized by size and format, and then in alphabetical and chronological order. A few publications, two general railroad films, and a tote bag were returned to the members of the AARTHA. Some publications (24), both monographs and parts of serials, were cataloged separately and added to the Clarke’s collections. Some of the items are quite acidic or fragile, most of which were photocopied and the originals were withdrawn from the collection (.25 cubic ft. total). In a few cases, where entire folders were composed of very fragile tissue paper records or acidic records, the decision was made to leave the materials as they were without copying them. Numerous abbreviations were used by Mr. Wilson within the collection, which were replicated by the processors. Michigan was often abbreviated MI by Mr. Wilson and is used in this finding aid. See the Scope and Contents Note for abbreviations used for names of railroad companies.

Professor of economics at University of Michigan, 1880-1921, statistician for the Interstate Commerce Commission, 1887-1911, developed standard accounting procedures for railroads. Papers include personal and professional correspondence, diaries, travel journals, drafts of books, letter books, reports and printed materials concerning his work with the Interstate Commerce Commission, his activities as an expert witness in railroad compensation and tax cases, and University of Michigan affairs.

The Henry Carter Adams papers consist of personal and professional correspondence, diaries, travel journals, drafts of books, letter books, reports and printed materials concerning his work with the Interstate Commerce Commission, his activities as an expert witness in railroad compensation and tax cases, and University of Michigan affairs.

Records of railroad companies, mainly Michigan lines, absorbed with the merger of the New York Central Railroad Company and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company into the Penn Central Transportation Company.

The nature of the records of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad reflects the recent history of the two companies. When the Penn Central Transportation Company was formed in 1968, the offices of New York Central--the junior merger partner--were dismantled and only a small percentage of records retained. Therefore, the extant New York Central records consist almost entirely of minutes and account books of a routine nature. By contrast, records of the Pennsylvania Railroad were relatively undisturbed by the merger and are today richer and more varied than those of the New York Central. The Penn Central records are most useful for their documentation of the growth of the railroad industry. They depict an industry in constant flux due to the opportunities for success offered by a burgeoning industry and the intense competition among railroads that resulted. A single volume of records often contains minutes of two or more railroads, reflecting either the failure of the original company or its takeover by or merger with another company.

Besides documenting the history of individual railroads and of the railroad industry as a whole, the Penn Central records are a good source on the economic and commercial development of Michigan and neighboring states, and provide insight into the rise and decline of various towns along the railroad. Minutes of New York Central subsidiaries, for example, contain discussions of negotiations with town officials over the proposed construction of tracks, bridges, depots, and the like. Similarly, the locality files in the Superintendent--Toledo Division series of the Pennsylvania Railroad records consist of correspondence and memoranda regarding improvements to, or the abandonment of, stations in small towns in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. This series also contains substantial correspondence files on Toledo, Detroit, and Grand Rapids.

Labor and social historians will find the Penn Central records useful in illuminating the lives of workers and in documenting relations between management and workers. More than 40 feet of labor relations files of the Ann Arbor Railroad include agreements between the company and unions, grievances, petitions concerning work rules and pay, wage and hour schedules, and circular letters. There are small series of labor relations files of other companies scattered throughout the collection. Researchers will also find information on the workplace and working conditions in the locality files of the Superintendent--Toledo Division series of the Pennsylvania Railroad; these files contain, for example, memoranda concerning clubrooms and sleeping quarters for workers in city depots.

There is very little technical material in the Penn Central records; photographs are likewise scarce. The most notable exceptions are in the car ferry files, found in three subseries of the Pennsylvania Railroad records: General Manager--Western Region, Vice-President and General Counsel, and Subsidiaries: Mackinac Transportation Company. The car ferry files include maps, plans, specifications, blueprints, and some photographs.

A large portion of the collection consists of records of small railroads that ran through Michigan or were based in Michigan. Records of these companies are brief, often including nothing more than articles of incorporation, a few pages or a volume or two of minutes, and perhaps some annual reports and financial records. Although many of these railroads were subsidiaries of either the Michigan Central Railroad, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, or the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, they have been filed under the parent company of which the sub-system was a part (New York Central, Pennsylvania, or Ann Arbor Railroad) to promote ease of access. Thus, for example, records of the Canada Southern Bridge Company, a subsidiary of Michigan Central Railroad, are filed under New York Central Railroad, the parent company of Michigan Central. Researchers uncertain of the parentage of a particular railroad should look in the subsidiaries section of the contents list under Ann Arbor, New York Central, and Pennsylvania Railroads. The railroads in each of these subsidiaries sections are arranged in alphabetical order.

Brief histories of individual railroads can be found in the "Green Books"--the annual reports of the New York Central Railroad Company and its subsidiaries. There are several published histories of the Pennsylvania Railroad in boxes 183 and boxes 155-157 and on microfilm in box 60.

A card file giving the date of incorporation, name changes, and parentage of subsidiaries of the Michigan Central Railroad, Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, and the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad has been photocopied and can be found in box 1 of the collection. This folder also contains a list of records in the Public Archives of Canada of Grand Trunk and Great Western Railway system properties in the United States. Finally, there is a section of Aids, Gifts, Grants and Donations to Railroads Including Outline of Development and Successions in Titles to Railroads in Michigan by the Michigan Railroads Commission (1919).

Information in this finding aid concerning the histories of the various railroads was drawn from the collection itself, from sources compiled by the project archivists, and from the following published sources: William Frederick Dunbar All Aboard! A History of Railroads in Michigan (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1969) and Henry E. Riggs, The Ann Arbor Railroad Fifty Years Ago (Ann Arbor Railroad Company, 1947?)