About this collection
- The Centerior Energy Corporation was founded in 1892 in Cleveland, Ohio, as the Cleveland General Electric Company, with a franchise from the General Electric Company of Boston, Massachusetts. In 1893, assets of the Brush Electric Light and Power Company and of the Cleveland Electric Light Company were transferred to the Cleveland General Electric Company, forming the nucleus of a new organization. On July 21, 1894, the name of the company was changed to the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CEI). In 1926, the company purchased the Cleveland, Painesville and Eastern Railroad Company and its subsidiary, The United Light and Power Company. Other power companies in the northeastern Ohio region were purchased during this time. In 1947 control of the company returned to the hands of public investors, and new power plants continued to be added to the system. The company's first nuclear power plant, the Davis-Besse facility, became fully operational in 1978. A second nuclear power facility, the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, was subsequently added. In 1986 Centerior Energy Corporation, an affiliation between CEI and the Toledo Edison Company, was formed to become one of the largest electric systems in the United States. In 1996, Centerior Energy Corporation and the Ohio Edison Company merged into a new holding company, First Energy Corporation. The collection consists of articles of incorporation, annual reports, bylaws, histories, correspondence, legal briefs, financial records, handbooks, speeches, pamphlets, publications, oral history transcriptions, organizational charts, rate schedules, magazine and newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks. Includes the correspondence of various presidents of the corporation.
- The Cleveland Development Foundation was a Cleveland, Ohio, non-profit corporation founded in 1954 to provide support for community development and renewal projects. The collection consists of financial records, notebooks of clippings, films, maps, and office files containing letter copies, correspondence, minutes, studies, proposals, speeches, contracts, insurance policies, printed brochures, pamphlets and booklets.
- In 1925, the Cleveland Water Department opened the Baldwin Water Treatment Plant in the Fairfax neighborhood on the border of Cleveland Heights. Supplying water to the Baldwin facility was the Kirtland Pump Station located on Lakefront Road at E. 49th Street. Just east of the Kirtland Station was Gordon Park Beach, which was a 122-acre recreational area along the lakefront on the eastern side of E. 72nd Street. Euclid Beach Park was located on the southern shore of Lake Erie at E. 156th St. and Nottingham Rd., about 8 mi. from Public Square. On the west side of Cleveland. Adjacent to the Division Avenue Treatment Plant (now known as the Garrett Morgan facility), Edgewater Park was purchased in 1894 by the city's Second Park Board from Jacob B. Perkins, Cleveland industrialist. The collection consists of 53 black and white photographs illustrating Baldwin Water Treatment facility, the construction of bulkheads along the shoreline at the Kirtland Pump Station, and Edgewater, Euclid Beach, and Gordon Parks.
- The College Club of Cleveland was founded on January 15, 1898 in Cleveland, Ohio. Louise Pope and Carolyn Shipman, two college graduates, were concerned with promoting the "social, philanthropic, and literary interests" of other college-educated women in the Cleveland area. The club started with 88 members from 17 colleges and universities. Miss Pope was elected the first president of the College Club, while Miss Shipman served as the first secretary. The group met twice a month on Monday afternoons. By the turn of the century, two years later, club membership blossomed to 115, a group too large to meet in homes of members or in college lecture halls. The Club secured a suite of rooms in the Wedge Building on Euclid Avenue near Erie Street (now East 9th Street) that opened every day to provide a gathering place for the members to engage in tea and conversation. Members took turns hosting the afternoon events, and furnishings were provided by alumnae groups from the 25 represented colleges and universities. Over the years, the College Club adapted to changing social conditions to keep the organization contemporary. Membership was extended to men, as well as people with at least two years of college credit, instead of the previous four-year requirement. Associate membership became available to anyone with employment or community service experience. The special interest groups and committees within the club met many interests. Members could enjoy bridge groups, dance classes, dinner expeditions, book discussions, foreign language classes, investment clubs, community service activities, and cooking clubs, among many others. The College Club prided itself on its charitable and philanthropic services to the Cleveland community. Scholarships were awarded annually to promising young women who were destined for college. The Mittleberger Fund, monies left to the Club after the death of member Augusta Mittleberger, supported a scholarship selectively given to exceptionally qualified young women displaying financial need. Other community projects included the donation of money to schools, libraries, shelters, and programs for the blind.
- Kurt Weiler, who was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States from Wuppertal in 1936, served as a corporal in the U.S. Army during World War II. The three documents in this collection, on display at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, describe the concentration camps upon liberation. The U. S. Army's 42nd Rainbow Division liberated the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945. This account was written for the May 1 edition of the division's newsletter and retained by Weiler. The account describes the wasted bodies of the camp's few survivors and the twisted corpses of the dead, many of them stacked near the crematorium like "some maniac's woodpile." Even war correspondents who had witnessed battles at first hand were stunned by the sight. Weiler contributed to the report on the Buchenwald concentration camp while serving as a corporal in the U.S. Army. He also wrote a letter to his relatives Max and Norma Herrman describing his discovery of the subterranean factory where the world's first jet fighter was built for the Nazis by slave laborers. Courtesy Estate of Kurt Weiler.
- Paul Bellamy (1884-1956) was an author, journalist, and editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer (1933-1954). He also served as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and director of the Plain Dealer and Forest City Publishing Companies. The collection consists of correspondence, speeches, newspaper clippings, non-correspondence, awards and tributes, lecture notes and papers from Harvard, and papers of Bellamy's father, Edward Bellamy.
- Ruby L. Terry was a former engineer and marketing executive for Bell Laboratories and the Ohio Bell Telephone Company, later Ameritech/SBC, and currently AT&T. She was responsible for generating $300 million in annual revenues from the engineering of large communication systems for such corporations as East Ohio Gas, Cleveland Clinic, Timken Company, and Goodyear Tire and Rubber. She also was assigned by her division engineer to design the first cable television system for cities in the northern and southern Ohio Bell service area. As an engineer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she had to overcome many obstacles as both an African-American and as a woman. This oral history was conducted by Celeste Terry, daughter of Ruby Terry, at Western Reserve Historical Society on July 28, 2018.
- Carl Stokes, and his brother Louis, were groundbreaking African-American politicians from Cleveland, Ohio. Carl Stokes became the first black mayor of a major U.S. city when elected in 1967. Louis Stokes was the first African-American congressman from Ohio when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968, a position he held for 15 consecutive terms. During Carl Stokes two mayoral terms, city hall jobs were opened to blacks and women, and a number of urban renewal projects were initiated. Between 1983 and 1994 Carl Stokes served as municipal judge, and in 1994 was appointed by President Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Seychelles. Louis Stokes began his career as a civil rights attorney, and helped challenge the Ohio redistricting in 1965 that fragmented African-American voting strength. In 1967, Louis Stokes argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Terry v. Ohio case, also known as the "stop-and-frisk" case. In the 1970s, Louis Stokes served as chair on Assassinations and in the 1980s was a noted member of the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. The collection includes 34 interviews with family and friends, associates and staff, and was conducted to commemorate the 50th anniversaries of Carl Stokes election as mayor and Louis Stokes to Congress.
- Thomas Howard White (1836-1914) was the founder of the White Sewing Machine Company, the While Motor Company, and the Thomas H. White Foundation, all of Cleveland, Ohio. He was born in Massachusetts, part of the White family which had immigrated from England ca. 1638. He moved to Cleveland in 1867. In 1876 he, his half-brother Howard W. White, and Rollin C. White (no relation) incorporated the White Sewing Machine Company. In 1899, his son Rollin Henry White invented the White steam car, put into production by the White Sewing Machine Company in 1900. In 1906, The automobile division was separated from the Sewing Machine Company as the White Company, later the White Motor Company. He and his wife, Almira Greenleaf White, had eight children; Mabel Almira Harris (wife of James Armstrong Harris), Alice Maud Hammer (wife of William Joseph Hammer), Windsor Thomas White, Clarence Greenleaf White, Rollin Henry White, Walter Charles White, and Ella Almira Ford (wife of Horatio Ford). The collection consists of a copy of the publication, Descendants of Thomas White, Volume II , written for Elizabeth White King by Betty King and Alice Coyle Lunn. The documentation collected during research for this book makes up the rest of the collection. It includes copies of wills, deeds, and patents; original correspondence and transcripts of correspondence of members of the White family; travel scrapbooks and a baby scrapbook; diaries; unpublished manuscripts; book; newspaper clippings; drawings; maps; oral history transcripts and memoirs; reports of Dr. Lunn to Betty King concerning her genealogical and historic research; and genealogical questionnaires filled out by family members.