Collections : [Central Michigan University Clarke Historical Library]

Chandler (Charlevoix County, Mich. : Township) school district and township records.

The collection includes township and school district records organized by size, then alphabetically and chronologically.

Papers include correspondence, notebooks, legal documents, essays, and photographs.

The Chaney Family Papers include correspondence, notebooks, legal documents, essays, and photos, which are arranged alphabetically by topic. The correspondence spans almost 120 years and consists of correspondence between family and friends. A letter from L. W. Caryl to Henry Chaney, dated 29 July 1832, describes a method for early diagnosis and cure of cholera. Between May 1837 and January 1838, Isabella Caryl (then living in New York) received letters from several of her former school mates (who called themselves “The Hill Girls”) who had moved to Detroit. Among the notebooks is one of Willard Chaney’s medical notebooks. Of the seventeen photos in the collection, only one, Marjorie Chaney Bow (Henry’s granddaughter), is identified.

The collection includes 20,000 images, in various formats, of mostly Michigan railroad-related topics, as well as people, scenic views, bays, towns, fires, inside and exterior views, Camp Custer, World War I and II military, and lumber camps.

This is a collection of 41,1056images in various photographic formats, booklets, CDs, and databases of digital images and information. Most of the images were taken or collected by Mr. Conn although some small groupings of images were given to him by other senior railroad enthusiasts over time. The collection is physically organized by format and intellectually by topic. Most of the topics are railroad-related, engines, companies, lines, stations, and others are of people, scenic views, bays, towns, fires, inside and exterior views, Camp Custer, World War I and II military, lumber camps, notably, Day Lumber Company, Emmet Lumber Company, Yuill Brothers Lumber, and some unidentified lumber camps, the Cadillac Handle Company and the Antrim Iron Company.

The first part of the collection includes original images or scans (either positive or negative) that have been made into slides or negatives. This includes 13 boxes of slides (1 slide box), slide negatives and negatives (approximately 5.5 cubic feet in 6 boxes), a few photographs, glass-plate negatives of various sizes (2 cubic feet in 4 boxes), and booklets of reproduced images (approximately .5 cubic foot in 1 box). These materials are organized by format and then by alphabetically by topic. Most of the items are undated. Dates noted by the photographers are 1913-1914, 1916, and 1918. A few miscellaneous items, possibly related to the photographers have been retained in the collection (see Box 12, Photograph, 1918, and Letter, 1916.)

While most of the collection is in very good condition, a number of the slides suffer from peeling emulsions and cracks, as well as other damage, which are noted on each individual negative’s sleeve. Also, because of the damage the glass-plate negatives sustained, not all of them were scanned.

The second part of the collection includes databases of the digitized images and identifying information about the images. A copy of the database called Michigan Railroad.accdb is divided into Conn and Conn Neg, and a copy of the TIFF files, called MichiganRailroad, which is organized by subject, are both available in the Clarke reading room (as of October 2012) as well as on the archivist’s office computer. The TIFF files are organized by general subjects so the link between the two databases is not always obvious to a non-railroad enthusiast. Mr. Conn reused identifying numbers, so everything related to one location has the same number, which may mean multiple railroads in one city. There is also a hard drive for preservation purposes.

Processing Note: Only a few extremely badly damaged glass-plate negatives were withdrawn with Mr. Conn’s permission from the collection.

Charles Conn Michigan Railroad Collection Negatives includes negatives of Michigan railroads and other Michigan-related topics, as well as people, scenic views, and buildings in Michigan.

This collection, 3 cubic feet (in 3 boxes), undated, is the 2018 addition to Charles Conn’s Michigan Railroad Collection. As far as we know this material has not been digitized and therefore is not part of the Charles Conn Michigan Railroad Database. Box 1 of the collection includes negative pages with one page or more of a specific Michigan city or county with image subjects such as buildings, businesses, people, and scenic views. Box 2 is a continuation of city and county negatives, with multiple locations in each page of negatives. At the end of Box 2 begins negatives categorized by specific railways in Michigan. Lastly, Box 3 includes miscellaneous railroad negatives, logging negatives, and unidentified negatives of people and buildings. Two folders of interest are glass-plate negatives (2), undated, of a blacksmith and equipment on a flatbed car, and Railroad index, undated, which appears to index items in Conn’s other collection. The collection is organized alphabetically and by topic. It is housed mostly in the original negative sleeves provided by Conn.

The collection includes 3,100 black and white and colored slides of Michigan railroad companies, vehicles, tracks, wrecks, depots, workers, and Michigan towns.

The slide collection includes approximately 3,100 mostly black and white, but with some colored 35 mm slides of Michigan railroad companies, their cars, engines, tracks, wrecks, depots, workers; Michigan towns on railroad lines, and the people, organizations, events, and buildings in them; logging camps, their crews, trains, kitchens, big wheels, and river jams; ships and boats; special trains and train cars; and miscellaneous. Towns well documented in the collection include: Charlevoix, Deward, Ellsworth, Flint, Gaylord, Honor, Midland, Petoskey, and Traverse City, Michigan. Lumber companies well documented in the collection include: Stephan’s Lumber Company, Waters, Michigan, and Yuill Bros. Lumber Company, Vanderbilt (Mich.). Two negatives of an unidentified railroad depot and an inventory to the slides completes the collection.

Michigan is abbreviated “Mich.” in the box and folder listing.

The papers include legal papers of circuit court cases from Saginaw and Genesee counties, Michigan, his service records while Quartermaster of the Michigan Infantry, 23rd Regiment during the Civil War, and biographical materials.

Lists of other Littles are found in the deeds. Legal papers include circuit court cases from Saginaw and Genesee counties. His service records as Quartermaster to the Michigan Infantry, 23rd Regiment are likely to be of the most interest to patrons.

A number of the legal papers have blurred ink due to water damage.

The collection includes mostly photocopies of materials generated by various lawsuits, and other materials documenting Native Americans of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and First Peoples of Ontario, Canada, their history, culture, and relationship with the presiding government.Tribes documented are noted in the subject headings.

The collection includes mostly undated photocopies of materials generated by various tribal lawsuits against states and the United States (US) government in the collection. Some of the materials date back to the 1780s, but they are not originals, they are photocopies mostly made in the 1970s-1990s or later. There are some original reports and court records created during the time period of 1970-2008. The collection is rich in and dense in documenting Native Americans of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and First Peoples of Ontario, Canada, their history, culture, and relationship with the presiding government.

The collection is in original order. It is organized alphabetically by series by tribe or community seeking tribal status, reservation boundary (KBIC) case, tax case, or for hunting and fishing rights (Voight or LCO case) (105 boxes, 102.5 cubic feet). Within each series there are various subseries which may include: calendar documents (reference documents in chronological order), Cleland reports and reports of others (un/published), Cleland’s testimony as an expert witness, reference documents and/or un/published sources including newspaper or journal articles, books, maps, government reports, laws, land, legal and tax records, correspondence, business or personal records, excerpts from journals, diaries, and accounts, treaties, various US or Canadian court documents, miscellaneous and/or related documents, footnotes, project files, transcriptions of oral histories, finding aids, various types of maps, sketches, and genealogical and/or family charts. Some materials are bound volumes and others are oversized materials. Tribes or communities represented in the collection include:

Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Wisconsin) 2 boxes (2 cubic ft.); Bay Mills Indian Community (Michigan) 15 boxes (14.5 cubic ft.); Fond du Lac Band of Chippewa (Minnesota) 8 boxes (7.5 cubic ft.); Forest County Potawatomi (Wisconsin), Notre Dame Project 4 boxes (4 cubic ft.); Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC, Michigan) 10 boxes (10 cubic ft.); Lac Courte Oreilles [Lake Superior Ojibwa]– Voigt Case 4 boxes (4 cubic ft.); Menominee (Wisconsin) 13 Boxes (12.5 cubic ft.); Mille Lacs Chippewa (Minnesota) 21 boxes (19 cubic ft.) (Note: Box 1 is actually half Menominee and half Mille Lacs Chippewas.); Saginaw Chippewa (Michigan) 13 boxes (13 cubic ft.); Sarnia [Chippewas of Sarnia Band (Ontario, Canada) who prefer to be known as Aamjiwnaang First Nation] 9 boxes (9 cubic ft.); Stockbridge-Munsee (Wisconsin) 8 boxes (8 cubic ft.).

Additional case and reference materials are found at the end in Boxes A-M (12 boxes, 9 Oversized folders, 13 cubic feet). These include: Box A: Bay Mills, US v. MI, 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box B: Bay Mills, US v. MI, KBIC Tax Case, KBIC Boundary Case, Crown v Sarnia, 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box C: Crown v. Sarnia 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box D: KBIC Boundary Case 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box E: KBIC Boundary Case 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box F: Saginaw Case 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box G: Miscellaneous Unpublished reports 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box H Finding Aids 1 box (.25 cubic ft.); Box I: Various legal cases, acts, statutes, decisions in Canadian cases 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box J: LCO Case, Stockbridge-Munsee, Mille Lacs, Fond du Lac, Grand Portage 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box K: Crandon Mine, Menominee Case, treaties US 1 box (1 cubic foot); Box L: Menominee Documents (really 1 Oversized folder on shelf); Box M: Calendars, Reference documents 1 box (1 cubic foot).

Also included are 5x8 inch notecards (4 boxes, 1.5 cubic foot), which usually document in one box each: KBIC, Grand Portage, MI and MN Chippewas, and Voigt.

Lastly, nine oversized folders (larger than legal-size, about .5 cubic foot) include mostly photocopies of a wide variety of maps, treaty signers, genealogy notes and family tree, and land claims.

All boxes in the collection are 1 cubic foot boxes except for the following: Boxes #15, 25, 68, 74-75 are .5 cubic foot boxes; Box #113 is .25 cubic foot box, Box #117 is really an Overszied folder; Boxes #119-122 are 5x8 inch index card boxes.

Materials were collected from a plethora of local, state, and national archives and historical institutions, as well as tribal archives, and various courts, both American and Canadian.

Abbreviations: Professor Cleland and his staff used numerous, and sometimes various, abbreviations for institutions, record groups and/or series names or other citations. Some of these were obvious to the processors, others were not. Many of these abbreviations are not identified in this finding aid. For example, enclosure is abbreviated multiple ways. These variations were retained during processing. Some of these variations are obvious and can be deduced by researchers from the materials.

Also, due to the length of the collection, a number of abbreviations and grammatical changes were implemented by the archivist.

The archivist also deleted: ["no reference" and "incomplete reference"], the, a, or an (articles) at the beginning of a title; Anonymous or Author unknown or a.u.; unknown dates, undated, ND, or n.d. and s.u. Marian also changed: Microfilm to micro and “and” to and; and abbreviated certain common words, as noted below, and the names of months.

Abbreviations used widely by Professor Cleland, his staff, and Marian the Archivist include: ABCFM=American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; AFCP=American Fur Company Papers; AG=Attorney General; ARCOIA=Annual Report of Commissioners of Indian Affairs; B or Bx=Box; BBC=Bishop Baraga Collection; BIA=Bureau of Indian Affairs; ca.=circa; CCF=Central classified files; CMU=Central Michigan University; CHL=Clarke Historical Library; Co.=County; COIA=Commissioner/s of Indian Affairs; Corp.=Corporation; Dist.=District; E=East, not eastern; encl.=enclosure or enclosed; GLO=General Land Office; HR=House of Representatives; HS=Historical Society; ICC=Indian Claims Commission; IL=Illinois; IN=Indiana; JL=Journal; LC=Library of Congress; LLL=Letters of Lucius Lyon; LRBO-OHC=Little River Band-Oral History Collection; Ltd.=Limited; MH=Michigan History (a publication); MHM=Michigan History Magazine (a publication); MI=Michigan; Misc.=Miscellaneous; MPHC=Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections (a publication); MN=Minnesota; MS=Mississippi; Mss.=Manuscript; MTRL-JP=Metro Toronto Reference Library-Jarvis Papers; N=North, not Northern; NAM=National Archives microfilm; NEB=Nebraska; NWT=Northwest Territories; OIA=Office of Indian Affairs; US=United States; PAC=Public Archives of Canada (National Archives of Canada); PAO=Public Archives of Ontario; PAO-WJLB=Public Archives of Ontario-William Jones Letterbook; Qly=quarterly; rec=received; S=South, not southern; SAM=State Archives of Michigan; TWP=township; UCA=United Church Archives; U.P.=Upper Peninsula; US=United States; UWO, RC-EP= University of Western Ontario, Regional Collection-Evans Papers; W=West, not Western; w/=with; WI=Wisconsin; WL, UWO-WP =Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario, Wawanash Papers.

Also, the original punctuation used varies. A few of the original folder labels were crossed out partially or entirely. These variations were retained during processing.

Processing Notes: Only a few duplicate copies were withdrawn from the collection. Several items which had suffered physical damage mostly due to mud or dirt stains or being badly crumpled or torn were copied and the originals were withdrawn from the collection. (The total withdrawn from this collection was less than .25 cubic ft.).

The vast majority of the collection was organized into series by tribal name or topic, foldered, and labeled before it came to the Clarke. Original folders were maintained in the collection. We endeavored as much as possible to duplicate the original label headings (which varied somewhat from series to series) in the Box and folder listing. Items that were not foldered were foldered by the archivist, and those that were unlabeled were identified and labeled by the archivist.

Musical collection, 1901-1927, documents the music a Saginaw, Michigan, dance band played, and Michigan publishers, distributors of music, and/or composers, and some Michigan tunes.

This Musical Collection, 1901-1927, undated, 3.5 cubic ft. (in 7 boxes, 1 Ov. folder), consists mostly of published, copyrighted dance band music. This collection documents Michigan music publishing companies and distribution companies used by dance bands prior to 1930, and, to a lesser extent, some individual Michigan publishers and/or composers, including Susie Adams, Joseph H. Hughes, and R. Harry Richardson. The smaller publishers may have been Michigan town newspaper publishers. There are also some examples of tunes with Michigan or a Michigan town in the title. Overall the music is in good condition, but some of it is becoming acidic. There are some songs which are incomplete, missing, for example, a trumpet or viola part. All of the music is letter-size except for the one folder of oversized music.

Most of the music was published by the Detroit branch of New York publisher Jerome H. Remick. Other publishers include: Jos. H. Hughes, Saginaw, and Michigan Music P.C. [Publishing Company], Saginaw. [Joseph H. Hughes is listed in OCLC as a composer who worked with arranger R. Harry Richardson. They composed a patriotic song, “I love my home land,” which was published in Saginaw in 1917.]

The collection is organized as follows: Basic dance band music from these three publishers, organized alphabetically by title (Boxes 1-5); 2-sided, dance band music with one song printed on the front side, and a second song printed on the back side of the same piece of music, organized alphabetically by title (Boxes 6-7). The last two folders in Box 7 include Advertising Materials from the Jerome H. Remick Company, Detroit, 1913-1917, undated; and manuscript music for the tune “She Rests…,” composed by Susie Adams, stamped R. Harry Richardson Co., W. Bay City, 1901. Oversized materials (in 1 Oversized folder) include five songs, three published in Saginaw, two by Jos. H. Hughes and one by Williams Song P.C. The last two songs include one published by the Grinnell Bros., Detroit, 1908, and the song “Ypsilanti,” published by a Chicago firm, undated. For each piece of music the folder label includes: title, composer, publisher name and location, and date. All boxes are letter-size .5 cubic foot, except Box 5 which is letter-size .25 cubic foot.

Processing Notes: During processing approximately 5 cubic feet of materials were withdrawn from the collection and returned to the donor, as per the donor agreement. This material included duplicates, concertina music, published music journals and catalogs, and miscellaneous, peripheral items. A few Michigan business fliers or brochures were added to the Michigan vertical files.

Business records of Ruggles' lumber, gas, oil, railroads, salt and real estate business interests. Most are accounts, although financial records, leases, legal contracts, court cases and testimonies are included as well as a few personal family materials.

The business records document Ruggles’ vast business interests including: lumber, gas, oil, railroads, and real estate. Most of the records are some form of accounts, payment information, leases, or legal contracts. Also included are numerous published court cases or trial testimonies of his lengthy legal case against Buckley and Douglas Lumber Company and other legal concerns. The collection provides a solid look at his complex business dealings and the shrewdness with which he amassed his wealth and made numerous enemies. The only personal information is some family photographs and his will.

The papers include family correspondence before, during, and after the Civil War, photographs, muster rolls, lists of military supplies and men.

The Papers include his personal and family correspondence, 1854-1878 and 1882-1926, mostly with his parents, brother (Frank), sister (Maggie), and his bride, or soon to be wife (Fannie Spencer). There are four diaries, 1860-1864, which like his letters discuss marches, battles, General McClellan and General Hooker, the treatment of soldiers, and cadets shot for desertion. Letters prior to and after the Civil War discuss life and business in Detroit. Part of the collection includes eleven muster rolls of Company E, 7th Michigan Infantry, June 1861-August 1863, and nine monthly returns, October 1862-September 1863. These are now separately housed with the collection of oversized Civil War muster rolls. Lists of military supplies and men killed may be found in Curtiss’ 1864 diary. There are also photographs of Curtiss and one of Fannie, including one of her in a 1855 New Testament. An illustration of the Curtiss homestead is found in one April 1907 issue of the Huntington Hills (p.3). Lastly, item index cards are available to assist researchers.