Collections : [University of Michigan William L. Clements Library]

An unidentified person, likely living in the vicinity of Woburn, Massachusetts, maintained this account book between 1862 and 1864. They recorded financial transactions, such as rent payments and daywork, with the bulk of the accounts with Messrs. Lewis & Culver. The volume also includes yearly cash accounts, documenting everyday purchases and payments, like travel costs to Boston and Reading, pencils and paper, produce, foodstuffs and spices, candy, tickets to events, clothing and sewing supplies, contributions to the "Plymouth Collection," and books and magazines. Titles purchased include the Lady's Book, Arthur's Magazine, Home Magazine, Sunday School Question Books, Home Missionary, and others. The volume also lists amounts earned by month, and a "Clothing Account" and "Furniture Account" for 1862. Several names appear at the back of the volume, including Joseph B. McDonald, John M. Stockman, Mary Eaton, James Donald, and others.

The Matthilde Ittel photograph album contains 122 photographs, 19 postcards, and 26 pieces of ephemera and mainly includes snapshots of people, landscapes, and buildings in Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario.

The album (18 x 27 cm) has black cloth covers with "Photographs" stamped on the front. Many of album compiler Matthilde Ittel’s family, friends, and colleagues are mentioned and pictured in this album, including William Baldwin Clipsham, Nettie E. Geyer, Freda Cloud, Mary Rieger Ittel, and Jessie Evelyn Ittel Kiel as well as staff of the W. E. Terhune Lumber Company. Numerous portraits are present throughout the album, many of which have been altered through cutting. Two images show a woman whose face has been entirely cut out, while many other images are cut along the lines of a person’s figure. Several images have had color added. The postcards primarily consist of images of destinations that the album creator visited such as the Bowery in New York City and the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while the ephemeral items include a hotel card, a small wooden oar, and typed notes containing humorous writings and social commentaries.

Images of note include pictures of Ittel wearing a Gibson Girl hairstyle coupled with a quote regarding the advantage of women not having to wear trousers, portraits of Ittel’s mother Mary and sister Jessie, two real photograph postcards of cats, a postcard of the merchant ship Tillie Covert, postcards and notes from a trip to Ontario in 1908, photographs and postcards relating to a 1909 trip from Rochester to Montreal and West Point, several photographs of a 1911 trip to Philadelphia and the Delaware Water Gap, and a staged photograph located on the back inside cover captioned "An Actual Operation For Appendicitis.”

This ledger contains documentation of the overall assets and liabilities of a merchant from 1878-1894, possibly in New York State. It includes information on monthly sales and net profits for several years, invoices of goods received and weekly cash sales, trades in stock, lists of store fixtures, and detailed yearly inventories of the store's merchandise, with notes on quantities and values. The types of goods include jewelry, fashion accessories, stationery, albums and scrapbooks, writing utensils, decorative items and tableware, toiletries, toys, and books of varying genres. The books and magazines represented include schoolbooks, children's books, poetry and literature, religious texts, and popular titles (including the Police Gazette), histories, etc.

The Michigan collection contains approximately 300 miscellaneous items relating to present-day Michigan during the 18th through the 20th centuries. Spanning 1759 to 1947, it comprises letters and documents pertaining to Native American activities, French settlement, trade, politics, town growth, agriculture, and land surveying.

• August 8, 1763, account of the Siege of Detroit by James MacDonald.
• Speech to the Ottawas attributed to Pontiac [1763].
• Robert Rogers' request for the removal of "Mr. Roberts the Commissioner of Indian affairs" (September 4, 1767).
• May 12, 1781 deed granting Michilimackinac to the British, signed by four Chippewa chiefs with their totem marks.
• A letter from John Jacob Astor, dated August 18, 1819, which refers to the fur trade and "Mackinaw skins."
• Discussion of the advantages of Niles, Michigan, by a recent settler (Sept. 1, 1836).
• August 26, 1840, letter concerning the political and economic climate of Michigan.
• Discussion of farming near Kalamazoo, Michigan (January 28, 1847).
• Three letters from Robert McQuaid, a soldier in the 27th Michigan Infantry during the Civil War (May 21, 1863; July 12, 1863; June 28, 1864).
• A letter dated August 7, 1916, with a description of summer vacation on Isle Royale.
• A letter on the prospects of the Democratic Party in Michigan (May 13, 1935).

The Michigan, Ohio, Illinois family photograph albums consist of a two-volume set containing 112 studio portraits of people taken in the midwestern United States.

Volume one (27 x 21.25 cm) has green fabric covers with a plush velvet heart in the center and faux bark pages. Contents consist of eight cartes de visite and 28 cabinet card portraits of men, women, and children.

Volume two (27 x 21.25 cm) has a maroon leather cover and contains a total of 76 studio portraits. The majority of photographs are cartes de visite and cabinet cards while there are also some tintypes present. Of particular note are images of men in military and fraternal uniforms.

The Mifflin family papers consist of the scattered remains of a large family's business and personal correspondence over several generations. The bulk of the material concerns two branches of the Mifflin family, the children and grandchildren of George Mifflin, son of John (1661-1714) and the children of another of John's sons, John. Both branches were affluent, well-educated, and politically involved, and although the collection is somewhat scattered, it is a useful collection for the study of family relations in southeastern Pennsylvania during the late 18th and early 19th century and the history of the Society of Friends. The collection also includes miscellaneous deeds, wills, bills, and other sundry items relating to the Mifflins between their arrival in America in the 1680s and the mid-19th century.

The names George, John, Jonathan, and Joseph were repeatedly used by every branch of the family. As a result, in the cataloging of the Mifflin Family papers, birth and death dates have been applied only when identities seem reasonably certain, and even at that, these should be viewed with caution.

Among the most interesting letters from the descendents of George Mifflin are the several letters of and relating to Charles Mifflin. As a record of a young man struggling against adverse circumstances and seeking to establish himself in life, the letters provide excellent documentation of mid-18th century Quaker attitudes toward the maturation into adulthood, familial responsibilities, and parental expectations. But the highlight of Charles' letters is a fine description of a love feast at the Ephrata cloister, 1769, where Charles had gone to learn German and thereby improve his prospects in the business world.

Four letters include information on the Revolutionary War. Two of Joseph Mifflin's letters (1776 July 14 and 22) provide accounts on the early phases of the war in Reading, Pa., the popular reaction, and the mobilization of troops. In a letter to John Mifflin written on August 24, 1777, Joseph Mayo relays rumors that William Howe is intending to land at the head of the Chesapeake to wage a campaign on Philadelphia, and adds wryly, "I hope that British Savages will be glad to get off with themselves long before it is in their Power to throw once more the Philadelphia Ladies into a disagreeable anxiety about the Fate of their Place of Abode." John Weston's letter of July 7, 1780, includes news that the women of the Baltimore Friends Meeting had agreed to knit stockings for the Continental Army. The post-war attitudes of two old foes are outlined in two letters written in 1784 and 1785 by Richard Hergest, a former seaman in the Royal Navy, to Capt. Henry W. Archer. Hergest and Archer appear simply to have agreed not to discuss politics in order to rekindle their once close friendship.

The most important items in the Mifflin papers are the two letters from Warner Mifflin, which provide important glimpses into the moral universe of the idiosyncratic Delaware abolitionist and reformer. The first of these letters, written by Mifflin to Nicholas Waln in December, 1780, includes an extended account of a dream that Mifflin had in which he saw Waln's corpse rise from the dead to admit that Mifflin had been right after all in his refusal to accept Continental currency or to pay war taxes. Mifflin also expresses serious concern over Waln's spiritual state (a remarkable fact, considering Waln's spotless reputation in the Quaker community), and discusses his famous visit to George Washington's camp to try to dissuade the General from pursuing his war-like ways.

In his second letter, dated 1783 July 16, Mifflin considers the case of the notorious China Clows, condemned to be executed for murder. Although Mifflin considered Clows to be a "bad man," he remained rigidly true to his pacifism in opposing Clows' execution.

John Houston Mifflin's fourteen letters were mostly written while he was working as a semi-itinerant portrait painter in Augusta, Ga., 1835-1839. They provide details on the social and artistic life in Georgia, descriptions of Augusta itself, and a few brief discussions of John's aspirations as an artist and attempts to establish his reputation. The collection includes three rough pencil portraits by Mifflin of his recently deceased brother, James.

Finally, the collection includes one letter of the well-known woman physician, Susannah Wright (Houston), and one letter (from her granddaughter, Deborah Ann) about her. In the letter from Susannah Wright to her husband, John, she describes an ailment she has contracted from drinking warm water and her efforts to treat herself. Three medical receipts, included in a separate folder at the end of the collection, may also have been issued by Susannah Wright.

This composition book was kept by 8–10-year-old Mildred Wood and Mary Wood while living in Illinois and Missouri. The volumes include copied song lyrics and poems, and pencil and crayon drawings. A number of pressed flowers and leaves are laid into the volume.

The song lyrics and poems focus on themes relating to nature, love, and friendship, and include titles such as "Missouri School Song," "The Yellow Rose of Texas," and "Illinois." The drawings feature flowers, houses, and a portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. One outdoor scene shows two girls playing in front of a house, labelled "Living on the farm." Two pencil and crayon drawings done on tracing paper are laid into the volume: one of a ladies' boot with the name "Hamilton Brown shoe Co." on it, and another of a valentine with Cupid holding a bow and arrow.

Several entries are suggestive of schoolwork, such as sentence diagrams, a list of courts, a passage about U.S. history, a list of teachers in the Venice Public School and the average grades in their classes, and a list of the "Names of the Teachers I have had at Differ[e]nt Schools." Another passage is titled "The Japanese Fan."

Later entries were written in a different hand and consist mostly of quotations and proverbs. The word "Graduate" is printed on the cover of the volume.

The Mills family photograph album consists of approximately 200 images and 6 loose photographs documenting a trip to London, Ontario, as well as the daily life of a well-to-do family in Marysville, Michigan.

The album (28 x 38 cm) has leather covers with the stamped initials “HEM” of the compiler Hannah Elizabeth Mills. Contents include photographs of the Marysville “Lower Mill,” residences belonging to Hannah’s brother Myron, numerous portraits of people including Hannah's youngest sister Hally, two photographs of Hally from when she had diphtheria in 1891, “Hal” in a darkroom likely in the Mills family home, people playing tennis, the Mills family cemetery plot, views of a trip to Stag Island, Ontario, an apparently ill person lying on a cot, and several views documenting a trip to what may be a relative’s home in London, Ontario. Also present are images from a winter "In the Lumber Woods, 1891", an excursion to Niagara Falls in 1894, the town of Pinckney, Michigan, following a tornado, and wedding gifts for Mary Margaret Mills and Walter Jasperson Hopkins.

The Native American collection is comprised of approximately 125 miscellaneous letters and documents concerning Native American Indians in the United States, Canada, and the West Indies, and their interactions with British and American settlers (1689-1921). Topics range from land agreements, legal issues, treaties, descriptions of travel through Indian Territory, Indian uprisings and conflicts, Indian captivities, prisoners of war, Indian enslavement, and interactions with Quaker and Moravian missionaries. Tribes include the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cree, Iroquois, Ojibwa, Oneida, Ottawa, Kickapoo, Seneca, Shawnee, Sioux, among others, and concern activities in Canada, New England, the Midwest, the South, and the western frontier. Also present are items written in Cherokee, Mohawk, and Ojibwa.

Artist "N. B." created this series of seven captioned pen and ink drawings and dedicated the volume to John L. Flagg in 1859. Titled "The Coming Man A Tragedy," the line drawings follow a woman's courtship beginning with the receipt of a letter from a potential suitor, her preparations for his visit, and the suitors' subsequent cancelling of the event.

The woman in the story received a letter from "Mr. Jones," stating that he would be coming soon; she then practiced songs he liked, made his favorite pudding, prepared a room, and dressed nice, only to receive a letter stating that he could not come.

The volume's title was created with letters shaped like humans and horses.