Search

This collection contains lectures, notes, photographs, correspondence, and architectural drawings documenting the work of Russell Sturgis, and, secondarily, his son, Lyman Sturgis. The materials were created between 1874 and 1932.

Letters and papers of Olcott. Among the subjects covered are the history of the Bank; banks and politics in New York during the Jacksonian era; the operations of the safety Fund Banking System; land acquisition in the West, particularly Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and western New York; the Boston and Albany Railroad; the Corning Land Company; and the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. The papers are divided into the following groups: letters received, including correspondence with Martin Van Buren, Samuel P. Chase, William Henry Seward, William B. Astor, Silas Wright, William Kent, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Horatio Seymour; documents including land deeds, wills, leases, bonds, sureties, orders to pay, checks, bank ledgers, partnership agreements, earnings reports, tax assessments, and land sales; household bills and receipts; bank notes including excellent examples of early American currency; miscellaneous account books, photographs, and printed material; patents for Michigan and Ohio lands to William Thompson, Thomas W. Olcott, and Garrit Denniston signed by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren (proxy signatures).