Letters, chiefly family in nature, written to and from Breese-Stevens-Roby family members of New Jersey and upstate New York. Also in the collection are family legal and financial papers, literary items, genealogical material, maps, postal forms, prescriptions and recipes, and newspapers. The material encompasses generations of this extended family from the early 1700s to the early 1900s, with concentration from the 1790s to the 1860s.
The collection includes correspondence, photographs, genealogical data, diaries, programs, clippings, legal and financial papers, and memorabilia of Nelson P. Darling and his son Frank Nelson Darling. There are letters from Billie Burke, Anton Long, Gustav C. Luders, Leopold Stokowski, and Florenz Ziegfield.
The Edna M. Green Papers consist of material relating to an unsuccessful discrimination suit brought by Green against Eastman Kodak Company.
Legal papers, correspondence and other papers of Elijah Miller (1772-1851). Auburn lawyer and judge and father-in-law of William Henry Seward.
Included in the Papers are approximately 150 letters. Most of them were written by members of the family and thus are of a personal or business nature. Some letters, after 1834, deal with life, investments, and land promotion in Michigan. All the correspondence has been indexed in the main manuscript index.
The Frederick Exley collection consists of 36 boxes and 9 oversize items of Exley's personal papers and memorabilia, including 7 boxes of correspondence; 6 boxes of manuscript and printed material by Exley; 1 box of manuscript material by other writers; 4 boxes of printed material and ephemera; 2 boxes of financial, legal, medical and personal documents and materials; 5 boxes of ephemera and memorabilia; 7 boxes of Jonathan Yardley's personal research and manuscript material; 5 packages of oversize ephemera; 1 framed oil portrait; and 3 large exhibit posterboard photos. Several books belonging to Frederick Exley have been removed from the collection and catalogued for Rare Books' stacks (see Appendix C for a detailed listing).
The Freeman Clarke Family Papers, 1812-1929, consist of the family and business papers of Freeman Clarke, primarily from the period of the late 1820's to the 1890's.
The George J. Skivington Collection consists of business papers of John Greig of Canandaigua, agent for William Hornby and other landowners in western and central New York. The land papers include deeds, contracts, surveys, maps, depositions in chancery case regarding title of Pulteney Estate, 1820-21, schedules of debtors, 1841-42, and Greig estate inventories and papers. There is also correspondence, including letters from Oliver Phelps, Israel Chapin, Robert Troup, William H. Adam, Joseph Fellows, Alexander Duncan, Alonzo Frost, Nathaniel W. Howell, Thomas Morris, John Rankine, William Jeffrey, John Tryon, Francis H. Beckwith, Josephine Greig Chappell, Lockwood R. Doty, and D.D.S. Brown, a paymaster in the U.S. Army, Civil War. Topics in the correspondence include lands in the Chenango Triangle, Military Tract, Cottringer Tract, Greig Tract at Rochester; Morrisville Tract at Philadelphia; and the Phelps and Gorham Purchase. There is also information about early Rochester railroads, the Sodus Canal Association, Sodus Land Company, the Shaker colony and Fourierite Phalanx at Sodus Bay, and the Ontario Glass Manufacturing Company at Geneva.
The letters are chiefly of family interest. Those written by Mary Evans Grier to her parents (Mr. and Mrs. George M. Grier) and sister while she was in Washington in 1857 and 1858 at the home of Senator and Mrs. William H. Seward are of particular interest. There are also several letters from William H. Seward to George M. Grier, to his daughter, Mary Grier, and to his father, Samuel S. Seward. Mr. Grier was a trustee of the Seward Institute in Florida, N.Y. which accounts for the letters concerning that institution from Thomas G. Schriver and Mary E. Hotchkiss.
His papers contain correspondence relating to the church, paperwork for the Knights, ephemera from various events in the Rochester community, and both personal and business paperwork.
