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Law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy, and Washington, D.C. attorney. Diary, 1943-1944, relating to the Supreme Court, and miscellaneous notes, correspondence and newspaper clippings; also papers of Justice Murphy collected by Gressman, including notes of cabinet meetings, and of conferences and telephone calls; and correspondence, 1937-1949, between Frank Murphy and Felix Frankfurter.

The collection consists of two kinds of materials: papers of Frank Murphy that Gressman accumulated as clerk to the Supreme Court Justice; and Gressman's own papers. The greater part of the collection are the papers of Frank Murphy, dating from 1935 to 1948, with the bulk of the files falling in the period of 1939 to 1941, when Murphy was US Attorney General and the first year of his tenure on the Supreme Court bench. Always conscious of history, Murphy made valuable notes on the cabinet meetings he attended and his meetings and conversations with various public figures. These individuals include Hugo Black, Louis Brandeis, William J. Donovan, Carter Glass, Charles E. Hughes, Cordell Hull, Joseph P. Kennedy, John L. Lewis, Sir Robert Menzies, Manuel Quezon, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Francis B. Sayre, Harlan F. Stone and Sumner Welles. Also of importance are the several files of letters exchanged between Frank Murphy and Justice Felix Frankfurter.

Gressman's own papers are much smaller, but these also relate to his association with Frank Murphy, including notes that he made preparatory to writing a proposed biography of Murphy. Gressman's diary on his time spent as Murphy clerk of the Supreme Court is dated July 1943 to April 1944.

Judge of the Recorder's Court in Detroit and Frank Murphy's brother; contain correspondence, legal briefs, newspaper clippings, and other materials concerning Detroit politics, 1935-1961, the grand jury investigation of Detroit street railways, 1936, arbitration of labor disputes, 1936-1941, investigation of the Charles Street housing project, 1939-1940, as well as materials illuminating the careers and personal affairs of both George and Frank Murphy, especially in relation to Detroit and the Philippine Islands.

The George Murphy papers, which encompass the years 1911 to 1961, are most comprehensive for the decade following 1932. During this period - the most politically active in Murphy's career - the correspondence is especially useful in illustrating George Murphy's role in his brother's emergence as a politician, especially his role as dispenser of patronage in the depression years. The papers, of course, illuminate the social function performed by the Recorder's Court and contain voluminous correspondence with state and federal judges, attorneys, prisoners, prison officials, probation officers, etc. Judge Murphy also maintained close contact with affairs in his home town, Harbor Beach. Included in the collection are significant materials on affairs in the Philippines during his brother's governorship there, particularly correspondence during the years 1933 to 1936 with his sister, Marguerite, Eleanor Bumgardner, and with leading Filipinos concerning conditions there.

Career military officer, served in the Philippines ca. 1900-1913, chief of the Philippine Constabulary, 1907-1913; papers include correspondence, constabulary reports, diaries, topical files, visual materials, and scrapbooks.

The Bandholtz collection, covering the period of ca. 1890 to 1925 (with some later papers of his wife Inez Bandholtz), consists mainly of materials accumulated while Bandholtz was stationed in the Philippines, 1900-1913. Except for this time in the Far East, Bandholtz was always on the move with ever changing assignments, and consequently his files covering his work on the Mexican border, for example, or the 1921 West Virginia coal miners strike (also known as the Battle of Blair Mountain) are substantially thinner. But in the Philippines, because he was a provincial governor and head of the indigenous military force, Bandholtz was at the center of affairs in this period of Philippine history. And beyond that, he made an effort to maintain and preserve as much documentation from his service here as he could.

The Bandholtz papers came to the library in three separate accessions in 1965, 1994 and 2005. The first accession includes the following series: Correspondence (1899-1913), Invitations, Miscellaneous, Published Materials, and Philippine Constabulary Reports (1906-1913). The second accession includes the following series: Biographical-Personal, Correspondence (1895-1925), Diaries (1900-1923), Topical Files, Visual Materials, Scrapbooks, and Inez Bandholtz papers. Although there is some overlap (especially in the two Correspondence series), the two accessions have been kept separate, and not interfiled, so that researchers who examined the first accession might read from the new material without having to go through the entire collection. This encoded finding aid treats the correspondence as a single series although it has not been interfiled. the third accession consists of correspondence (1903-1912), chiefly confidential letters between Bandholtz and Luke Wright and Leonard Wood, concerning major military an political issues in the Philippines.