| | Abstract: | William Pendleton Palmer (1861-1927) was the President of American Steel and Wire Company, a director of U.S. Steel Corporation, and President of the Western Reserve Historical Society (Cleveland, Ohio) from 1913-1927. Palmer had an intense interest in the American Civil War and acquired an extensive collection of manuscript material related to the war, the memories of that conflict, and slavery. This collection is one of several Palmer collections from the Civil War era owned by the Western Reserve Historical Society. The collection consists of dozens of different types of documents in three distinct categories: civilian, governmental, and military. The document types created by civilians are: academic records, autographs, bills of lading, bills of sale, biographical sketches, circulars, diaries, dissertations, envelopes, essays, financials, funeral records, invitations, letters, manifests, memoirs, minutes, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, petitions, plantation records, obituaries, poetry, postcards, prayers, reminiscences, resumes, rosters, scrapbooks, sermons, ship's papers, slave rolls, song lyrics, speaker's notes, speech texts, unpublished books, and yearbooks. Governmental documents types are: affidavits, certificates, contracts, coroner's reports, court documents, depositions, diplomatic documents, financials, indentures, legislation, letters, licenses, notes, pardons, probate records, proclamations, resolutions, subpoenas, telegrams, and warrants. Military documents types are: battlefield dispatches, charts, code books, commissions, courts martial documents, discharges, drawings, furloughs, inventories, letters, maps, manuals, muster rolls, notes, orders, passes, payroll records, pension records, materials by and related to prisoners of war, reports, service records, shipping documents, telegrams, and vouchers. | |
