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.
George Magoffin Humphrey was the President of the M.A. Hanna Company, and United States Secretary of the Treasury (1953-1957). The collection consists of two albums, loose photographs, a notebook, and a booklet containing photographs related to the career of George M. Humphrey of Cleveland, Ohio. Included are portraits of Humphrey as a child, with President Dwight Eisenhower and various members of the Eisenhower administration, and with his wife, Pamela Stark Humphrey. Group photographs contain views of Eisenhower's second inauguration that include Vice President Richard M. Nixon; business associates of Humphrey; various ceremonies, receptions, and dinners attended by Humphrey and his wife; photographs of Humphrey receiving various honorary academic degrees at a number of institutions; Humphrey with Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain; and travel photographs, including several trips with President Eisenhower and other cabinet members. A booklet contains photographs and maps relating to the operation of the Iron Ore Company of Canada. Other loose photographs contain views of work on a railroad to the Scheffeville Mines Iron Ore Company, a ceremony marking the completion of that railroad line, and ceremonies marking the first passage of an iron ore cargo from Canada to Cleveland, Ohio through the St. Lawrence Seaway.
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.