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This account book consists of financial documentation for a man (likely a merchant) who operated out of Baltimore and New York. The entries range from 1785 to 1793. Included in the volume are accounts relating to fabrics, household goods, seemingly high-end dishware and glasses, and occasional payments for tuition for Harry Blakely and Aurelia Blakely, including at a boarding school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Several references in the volume relate to African Americans (ex. p. 8, "pd. Yr. order to negro Tom," and engagements with the ship Adventure to South Carolina, St. Lucia, Curacoa, Lisbon, and others. Some accounts are pertinent to the New York Society Library (p. 82) and the purchase of books.

The Letters, Documents, and Other Manuscripts of the Duane Norman Diedrich Collection is a selection of individual items compiled by manuscript collector Duane Norman Diedrich (1935-2018) and the William L. Clements Library. The content of these materials reflect the life and interests of D. N. Diedrich, most prominently subjects pertinent to intellectual, artistic, and social history, education, speech and elocution, the securing of speakers for events, advice from elders to younger persons, and many others.

The Letters, Documents, and Other Manuscripts of the Duane Norman Diedrich Collection is a selection of individual items compiled by manuscript collector Duane Norman Diedrich (1935-2018) and the William L. Clements Library. The content of these materials reflect the life and interests of D. N. Diedrich, most prominently subjects pertinent to intellectual, artistic, and social history, education, speech and elocution, the securing of speakers for events, advice from elders to younger persons, and many others.

For an item-level description of the collection, with information about each manuscript, please see the box and folder listing below.

This atlas compiled by R. A. L. Robinson features small maps of the nations of the world, with descriptions of different societies (education, government, etc.) and comparisons to the United States.

This atlas compiled by R. A. L. Robinson features small maps of the nations of the world, with descriptions of different societies (education, government, etc.) and comparisons to the United States.

The majority of the regions represented in the volume are within Africa, Asia, and Europe. The descriptions of regions and countries include disparaging and condescending language.

The Stinchfield family papers contain the correspondence, business records, financial and legal documents, photographs, and genealogical papers of the Stinchfield family, founders of a successful lumber business in Michigan in the mid-19th century. The collection also includes materials related to social and family events in Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, through the mid-20th century.

The Stinchfield family papers consist of the correspondence, business records, financial and legal documents, photographs, and genealogical papers of Jacob W. Stinchfield, his wife Maria Hammond Stinchfield, and their descendants. The collection's correspondence and documents are organized by generation, reflecting their original order. The earliest items in the collection (Generation I series) include real estate transactions involving Jacob Stinchfield of Lincoln, Maine, dating from 1837. Beginning in the 1860s, after the family’s move to Michigan, the records include correspondence, accounts, and other financial records relating to the lumber business, begun by Jacob and continued by his son Charles Stinchfield. The materials provide information respecting the management of men in lumber camps, logging in winter weather conditions, methods of transportation, the challenges of rafting logs downriver, and other lumber business operations in volatile market conditions. Jacob and Charles Stinchfield’s partner, and frequent correspondent, was David Whitney, Jr., a wealthy Detroit businessman.

The Stinchfields expanded their company to include railroads (to facilitate their logging operations) and mineral mines. Many documents in the Generation II series, including manuscript and printed maps, concern land development in Michigan, where the family owned a farm in Bloomfield Hills, and in the West, especially Wyoming. The family traveled extensively and corresponded about their experiences in Europe, Asia, and the western United States. The Civil War is represented with small but significant holdings -- among them, a September 21, 1864, note written and signed by President Abraham Lincoln, requesting a fair hearing for a furlough (probably for George Stinchfield), and a February 14, 1863, letter from Vice President Hannibal Hamlin to Jacob W. Stinchfield, assuring him that George McClellan would not be ordered back to the command of the army.

The collection's twentieth-century materials (Generation III and Generation IV series) consist largely of the personal correspondence of Jacob Stinchfield’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The life of Charles Stinchfield, Jr., is well documented, from his schooling at St. John’s Military Institute in Manlius, N.Y., and a brief time at Cornell University, through his roles in the family business, his marriage, and the raising of his three children. Interactions between Charles Stinchfield, Jr., and his father, Charles Stinchfield, a demanding and energetic businessman, are also well represented in the collection. The materials reveal relationships between family members and their servants, and spiritualists' attempts to contact Charles Stinchfield III, who died of appendicitis in 1933 at the age of 15. Later papers provide descriptions of the social life of a wealthy family in the early and mid-20th century, at their residence in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and at their country home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

The Genealogy series, compiled largely by Diane Stinchfield Klingenstein, contains extensive background research on family members, copies of Ira and George Stinchfield’s Civil War records, transcriptions of letters written by Charles Stinchfield on a journey west in 1871 (not otherwise represented in the collection), and a typewritten draft of Diane Klingenstein’s family history, "One bough from a branch of the tree: a Stinchfield variation."

In addition to materials organized by generation, the collection includes photographs, scrapbooks, pastels, realia, and books. Many of the photographs are individual and group portraits (both studio and candid) from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The images include many exterior views of the land and buildings of the family’s country home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (Stonycroft Farm, ca. 1910), and of the Stinchfield residence in Grosse Pointe, Michigan (ca. 1940s). Early 20th-century lumber camps and railroads in Oregon and mining camps in Nevada are represented in photographs and photograph albums. The collection contains photos from trips to Japan (ca. 1907), the American West, and Europe. The collection's scrapbooks include newspaper clippings, invitations, and photographs, mainly concerning the life of Diane Klingenstein in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, during the 1930s and 1940s.

The Stinchfield family papers contain three pastel portraits of unknown subjects. The Realia series includes a bone ring likely made by George Stinchfield when he was a prisoner on Belle Isle, Virginia; a ring bearing Ira Stinchfield's name and regiment, in case he died during the Civil War; hospital identification and five baby pins for Diane W. Stinchfield (1925); a variety of additional Stinchfield family jewelry; and several wooden, crotched rafting pins, apparently from Saginaw, Michigan.

The Books series includes a copy of The Pictorial Bible, given to Charles and Mary from Father Fish, June 12, 1879, and a selection of 9 additional publications, which are cataloged individually. A comprehensive list of these books may be found by searching the University's online catalog for "Klingenstein."

The Towle family correspondence is comprised of letters written by Electa Towle of Avon, Maine to her husband Daniel while he was mining in California, and later to her daughter Clarinda when Electa was living away from her.

Electa wrote most of the letters (105 out of 127), 34 of which she wrote between 1850 and 1853, and 71 between 1874 and 1895. Other members of the family wrote the rest of the letters -- her son Daniel Higgins, his wife Amanda, his second wife Mary, her daughter Clarinda, and several of Electa's grandchildren. Many letters also contain entries by Electa and her children or grandchildren.

The collection can be divided into two parts chronologically and thematically. Those which date from July 24, 1850, to February 13, 1853, were written by Electa from Avon, Maine, to Daniel in California. The letters that date from August 11, 1872 to July 21, 1895 were written primarily by Electa to Clarinda, while the former lived in Red Wing, Minnesota, with her son Daniel and his family, and the latter in Strong, Maine. The two sets of letters illustrate two distinct phases in Electa's life. From 1850 to 1853, she had a very active role as the sole manager of both her household and the farm. She was also the Postmistress for Avon, a position Daniel had held before leaving for California. Their financial situation was her main concern, but she also wrote her husband about the management of the farm, and about their children's health and activities. Concerned about their many debts, she frequently requested money, giving details of her purchases and the sale of livestock and agricultural products from their farm: "I can get along if they do not call upon me for debts...how I wish you could send me a $1000 to pay all we are a owing" (January 1, 1851). Fortunately Electa was able to procure an income for herself, as she did not receive money from Daniel on a regular basis.

The letters from 1874 to 1895 reveal a more passive side of Electa, as her responsibilities were few, especially as she got older and more fragile. Nevertheless, she managed to provide Clarinda with detailed updates on Daniel's farming business and the activities of the family and neighbors. She took great care to describe her new home and the town of Red Wing, as well as her disapproval for her son and daughter-in-law's lax and indulgent parenting style. To a lesser degree, she also described her own activities, which mainly entailed looking after her grandchildren, sewing, and making dresses. Indeed, sewing, knitting, and dressmaking were activities that consumed much of the time of many women in the family. Several letters to Clarinda were accompanied by fabric samples of the material that they had used to make dresses. Electa also mentioned a considerable number of young female relatives and friends who had learned the dressmaking trade and found jobs in shops.

The collection includes Daniel Towle's partially printed registered letterbook that he kept from December 31, 1855 to February 29, 1874, while serving as Postmaster in Avon, Maine. It documents registered mail leaving the Avon post office, noting the date and the address on the letter.

The Women, Gender, and Family collection contains miscellaneous individual items relating to women, gender, and family primarily in America, between 1678 and 1996.

The Women, Gender, and Family collection contains miscellaneous items relating to women, gender, and family between 1678 and 1996. The bulk of the collection ranges in from 1800 to the early 20th century and is geographically focused on the United States of America. Topics include marriage and divorce, childrearing and motherhood, household management, and consensual and coerced sex. Other areas of interest cover women’s various forms of labor, legal restitution for paternity suits and financial support, and education for women and children. While not as heavily represented, multiple items detail women's engagement in politics, slavery and abolition, and women's rights.