New Manuscripts Finding Aids, Spring 2022: Cuba, War of 1812 Privateering, Teenagers, Labor, and More
The William L. Clements Library is pleased to share 23 new finding aids for manuscripts collections. Many represent new acquisitions, such as our growing collection of materials related to Cuba in the 19th century. Others include two journals kept aboard privateer vessels during the War of 1812, one of them by a sailor and the other by a ship physician. We continue to improve our collections related to the lives and activities of teenagers, particularly in the form of diaries and...
Picturing Michigan’s Past: Explore History Through Photo Postcards
Post by Claire Danna, University of Michigan School of Information Joyce Bonk Assistant. Claire joins us for a two-year assistantship with the digitization team while completing a master's degree in Information Science at the U-M School of Information. One of Claire's first projects has been to scan the 60,000 postcards from the David V. Tinder collection of Michigan photography and develop materials for the Zooniverse crowdsourcing project. * * * The William L. Clements...
Minette: “A Mixed-Race Lead Actress on the Baltimore Stage, 1796” Revisited
One of the Clements Library's objectives for its blog is to create additional ways for scholars to take notice of collections relevant to their research. We describe acquisitions, archives, resources, highlights, and out-of-the-ordinary items to draw attention to materials that might not otherwise be found through our finding aids and catalog records. Scholars frequently have a knowledge base that helps us better understand the collections that we care for, and in some cases, we connect with...
“Notions of Freedom”: Slavery and Escape in the Southeastern Caribbean
Guest post by Patrick T. Barker, Clements Library 2019 Price Fellow. An earlier version of this post was published on April 7, 2020; it has been retitled and expanded with additional material. During the early 1770s fugitives from slavery fled by sea from the then-British Caribbean colony of Carriacou, an island a short sail from Grenada in the southeastern Caribbean. The fugitives, wrote the British Windward Islands’ governor William Leybourne in 1773, “escape from us in boats to some...
Applications Open for a New Transatlantic Fellowship in 2022-2023
The Clements Library is pleased to announce the launch of a new research funding opportunity for 2022-2023. In partnership with the American Trust for the British Library (ATBL), the William L. Clements Library will offer a Transatlantic Fellowship designed to support at least four weeks of research between both the British Library and the Clements Library, with at least one week of research time at each institution. The award will be $5,000 USD (paid via the ATBL) and is meant to be applied...
A Q&A with Clements Librarian for Instruction & Engagement, Maggie Vanderford
In September 2021, Maggie Vanderford joined the University of Michigan community as the Librarian for Instruction & Engagement at the Clements Library. Maggie comes to Michigan from UCLA, where she is finishing her Ph.D. in English and worked at the William Andrews Clark Library in instruction, outreach, engagement, and research services. Before moving to UCLA, Maggie received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Creighton University and her Master of Arts degree in English from the University...
Clements Library acquires rare hand-drawn map of Detroit from 1761, pursues crowdfunding
The last time the general public had the opportunity to see the “Plan of the Fort at De Troit” was in 1967 when it was offered for sale at Sotheby’s. Now it will be part of the University of Michigan’s William L. Clements Library collection. Not knowing to whom the original was sold back then, former Clements curator Brian Dunnigan studied the photo included in the Sotheby’s auction catalog to write about this hand-drawn map for his book Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit. “This map...
New Graphics Finding Aids: Fall 2021
The Clements Library is pleased to announce that the following collections in our Graphics Division are now described online and may be requested for use in the reading room. The Clements Library is now open for research by appointment. Learn more at clements.umich.edu/coronavirus. All researchers are encouraged to contact Clements Library staff for guidance on how to complete their research with both digital and physical materials. Please contact us with any questions about your research....
Joseph Cabay, or Kewakezhig: A Home in the Skies
The Clements Library is thrilled to have recently acquired a mid-19th-century calling card for a Saginaw Band Ojibwa man named Joseph Cabay which will be a welcome addition to the Native American History Collection. Born around 1837 in Saganing, Michigan, to Ca-ba-o-sau-dung/Elliot Cabay (a son of Chief O-ta-was) and Pedah-bore-no-qua, Joseph was living at 5 Tremont St., Boston at the time this calling card was produced. Like many Native Americans of his day and age, Joseph had to navigate...
Clements Library invites applicants for 2022-23 Research Fellowships
The William L. Clements Library collections exist to be used.Nothing makes the staff of the Clements Library happier than to see the Avenir Room full of researchers using the collections. At any given moment, the tables may host innovative work on topics as varied as gender in 18th-century Yucatan (the topic of Alfred A. Cave Fellow Samantha Davis’ project) to the spatial politics of sheet music (as exemplified by the project of Jacob M. Price Fellow Colin Anderson), just to name only two. We...