This collection contains material on Erastus Dow Palmer, used by Temple Hollcroft, Catherine Bacon, and Joseph Gravit, ranging from the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. It also contains pictures of E.D. Palmer himself and his work.

John Quincy Adams Ward was born on June 29, 1830, in Urbana, Ohio. The fourth of eight children born to John Anderson (1783-1855) and Eleanor Macbeth Ward (1795-1856), one of his younger brothers was the artist, Edgar Melville Ward (1839-1915). Encouraged in his early art by local potter, Miles Chatfield, Ward became discouraged after attending a sculpture exhibition in Cincinnati in 1847. While living with his older sister Eliza (1824-1904) and her husband in Brooklyn, New York, Ward began training under sculptor Henry Kirke Brown (1814-1886), under whose tutelage he would remain from 1849-1856. In 1857 he set out on his own, making busts of men in public life. In 1861, Ward set up his own studio in New York City, where he dedicated himself to developing an American school of sculpture. Left a widower twice, Ward eventually married Rachel Smith (1849-1933) in 1906. She was instrumental in helping to get his work and papers placed in numerous institutions. During his lifetime, Ward created numerous public sculptures, including one of General Phillip Sheridan in Albany, New York, and he participated in and served on numerous boards. Ward died in New York City in 1910, and was buried in Oakdale Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio. This collection contains correspondence, business records, organizational records, photographs, clippings, sculpture plans, sketches, speeches, and a scrapbook.

This collection contains the correspondence between Launt Thompson (1883-September 1894) and his three children, a son, Lancelot C. Thompson, and two daughters, Mariette and Florence ”Flossy” Thompson, mostly in the form of letters addressed to Thompson from his children dating from 1880 to 1888. Along with these letters, the collection contains a series of drawings addressed to Thompson from his children dating from the same period, as well as “Mental Photographs” (a list of hypothetical questions which the children answered) dating from 1886. The collection also contains a letter, dated February 24, 1883 from a man named Bayard addressed to Launt Thompson regarding Thompson’s sculpture, Admiral Samuel Francis DuPont, (1884) located in Wilmington, Delaware.