Julius Doerner Bookstore Correspondence, 1851-1916 | University of Illinois Archives

Description: Correspondence of Julius Doerner, owner of the Library Clearinghouse, 140 Wells St., Chicago including business and personal correspondence, photographs, and albums.  Business correspondence concerns bill, summons and inquiries about books.  Correspondents include lawyers J. M. Camelon, E. M. Elliott and Thomas Lawlor; tax and bill collectors W. P. Moore and John R. Thompson; J. Defenbaugh of The American Lumberman; George Houghton of Hub Magazine, Henry L. Mencken of Baltimore Evening Sun; Curt Kirch and Milton Fuessle of the Saturday Night Lantern; Albert Britnell and J. P. Nelson, books and antiquities, and Ernest Hertzberg, binding and John Anderson, Jr. (later Anderson Auction Co.).  Correspondence from friends, often relating to books and antiquities, includes letter from G. W. Barker, Chicago bookdealer (with original copies of music Barker wrote); Alfred A. Goldschmidt; Mrs. Mena G. Pfershing; Paul Wenzel and B. Vass Wiberg.  Family correspondents include Carl, Fannie, Nelda and Thusalda Coerner, and the Grant and Eda Russell family, all of Coudersport, Pa.; Mathelda and A. T. Hollenbeck family, the James Phillips (father-in-law) and Jesse Ropa (brother-in-law) families, and Willis A. Parker.  Photographs include family, friends and Chicago political figures W. France, John H. Helwig, and Michael McInerney Albums (1851-1872) belonged to C. S. Armstrong (Union Theological Seminary, class of 1856); Mary Cracraft (1851-52, Washington county, Ohio); "Kate" (1857, Ohio); and "An Employee in Gen. J. McArthur's Machine Shop", "The Tight Fitter," poem in "Machine Verse" written and illustrated by hand, 1872,  Acquired German ledger (1547), includes newspaper clippings, accounting ledger (1873-1876) purchased in 1918 from the University of Illinois Library Collection, ledger of sales of inventoried books (1902) which includes list of cosigners to former Library Supply and Clearinghouse.