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This incomplete collection, 1878-2019 (Scattered) and undated, includes a diary, a diary/ledger book, a restored photograph of Adam Assal (and a photo print copy), and genealogical research compiled by and about Assal and his extended family.

This incomplete collection, 1878-2019 (Scattered) and undated, includes a diary, a diary/ledger, a ledger, a restored photograph of Adam Assal (and a photo print copy), and genealogical research compiled by and about Assal and his extended family. The biographical section of this finding aid details the topics Assal wrote about in his diaries. The Biographical Materials folder includes genealogical research compiled by Adam‘s descendants, their genealogical correspondence (copies) and related materials. There is an undated, professional portrait photograph of Adam Assal, which appears to have been restored in the twentieth or early twenty-first century and a photographic copy print of it. In the photograph Assal is an adult with dark hair and a greying beard. There are also three folders of genealogical information from Ancestry.com, 2019, about Assal and his family, including Eva’s incarceration as an insane woman in the State Hospital in Traverse City, and documentation of Henry Irons’ Civil War pension records. There are also two folders of Charles (Carl) Swanson) genealogical information from Ancestry.com, including one folder on extended family information, 2020-2021.

Miscellaneous notes are found on the inside covers of all the volumes in the collection. The diaries include his handwritten entries in pencil or black or red ink. The dates are scattered, sometimes skipping months in between entries, while at other times they are almost daily. Some events are recorded in a summary fashion after the fact.

The legal-size diary/ledger spans January 19, 1878-September 21, 1891 on pages 112-236 of the volume. Page 111 (the first surviving page in the volume) and page 266 include accounts concerning wood and potatoes and miscellaneous, 1885 and undated. Pages 261-262 and 265 document the daily temperature and wind. Only the G-Z front index pages, and pages 1-68, 145-148, and 217-250 survive in this ledger. An additional index is written on page 33. The dates of recorded entries jump from September 14, 1888 to May 7, 1889 on the same page (p.190). The volume includes a variety of accounts, some specifically with Assal. Accounts vary from basic mathematical totals to specific accounts for lodging, wood and log jobs, rent, postage, groceries, dry goods, and money donated to an orphan's home. Children's drawings of Essexville (p.68), blobs (pages 145, 235), and deer (page 218) are included in the volume, as well as evidence a child practiced writing their numbers (page 219). There is a printed note by a child, "Alonzo Assal Jr four years old, Frank J. Assal, ten years old" with other names and Michigan locations (p. 48). When he was age nine, Alonzo printed his name in the volume (p. 166). Scribbles are found throughout the volume. The pages that survive are separated from the covers and spine. The cover has some leather rot issues, and some pages are acidic.

A smaller diary volume contains Adam’s diary entries for September 10, 1885-January 11, 1887 (pages 43-142). There are lines in pencil around the words on pages 84-85, 114-115 and 118-121, presumably drawn by children. This volume is also missing pages. The extant pages are separated from the covers and spine. A receipt to Alonzo Assal for $62.50 from Richardson Lumber Co., Bay City, Mich., July 3, 1925 is found inside the back cover. It is printed and typed on a small, acidic envelope with a corner ripped off. Because it is acidic, the envelope is now in a folder piece of acid-free paper.