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Law firm records include legal records of estates, divorces, chancery cases, and debt collection, correspondence, and numerous land records. McKee family records are also included.

The collection includes many types of legal records, including: Estates, Divorces, Chancery Cases, and debt collection papers. Correspondence is from clients, lawyers, legal firms, banks, and various land offices. Some of the larger case files include those of the Bank of Lansingburgh (New York) and the Indian Mill Creek Salt Company (Grand Rapids, Mich.). Numerous land records include: State Tax Deeds, Indentures, Mortgages, Bounty Lands for Veterans and their widows, Deeds, Plat Maps, and Receipts for land. The firm had many clients in Michigan and New York (State).

McKee family records include family correspondence, 1840s-1874, undated; legal cases, and Aaron McKee’s (father of James McKee) inheritance case, 1856-1864. Also included is the 1862 license for Ball and McKee and a letter of protest over the removal of the soldiers’ memorial in Grand Rapids, 1908.

Processing Note: Personal materials of John Ball were apparently removed when this collection first came to the Clarke and became the John Ball Family Papers.

Papers include biographical materials, correspondence, typed drafts and galley proofs, a photograph, and miscellaneous.

The collection includes De Jong’s typed drafts and galley proofs of many of his books, some correspondence with editors, Elizabeth Nowell (his agent), correspondence with his family, 1933, 1945 and biographical materials, undated. The miscellaneous materials include the Michigan Works Program Administration’s Federal Music Project, 1938-1939, (1 folder) and a photograph of deaf children at the Kalamazoo State School in Lansing, Michigan, undated (1 folder).

Copies of sixteen of De Jong’s books are separately cataloged in the Clarke Historical Library.

Notecards on research topics for Lydens' book, the Story of Grand Rapids, Michigan (1966).

Notecards on research topics for his book, the Story fo Grand Rapids, Michigan (1966), a copy of which is available in the CMU libraries.