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The Claude Family Lewis Papers are mostly materials related to Claude Lewis and his family: first wife (and mother of his children) Mary, second wife Helen, and his surviving children - Freeman, Virginia, and Isabel. These materials include letters and other papers from his younger brother, Harry Sinclair Lewis, who, as an author, rose to worldwide fame.

When possible, people, especially those with a connection to the Lewis family, are identified to provide context to the materials.

Series 1: Correspondence

This series contains correspondence between members of the Claude Lewis family, others outside of Claude Lewis's family, and with those outside of the family. The letters are organized in sub-series by those who sent them.

Sub-Series 1: Claude and Mary Lewis

This subseries contains mostly letters that Claude wrote to his wife Mary and children Freeman, Virginia, and Isable. Significant are the letters that he wrote while vacationing in Alaska with wife Mary that chronicles their experiences.

Sub-Series 2: Edwin Lewis

This series contains a few letters written to Claude and Mary Lewis regarding life in Sauk Centre.

Sub-Series 3: Freeman Lewis

These letters were written by Freeman Lewis to his parents Claude and Mary from 1933 through 1940 about living in New York, his new family, including wife Judy Jennison Lewis, and the effects of the Great Depression.

Sub-Series 4: Grace Hegger Lewis

Written to various Lewis family members, mostly in the 1920s, Grace describes life living and traveling with her husband Sinclair Lewis. Especially noteworthy are the letters sent to Mary Lewis, often detailing the trials and tribualations of life in Europe.

Sub-Series 5: Helen Lewis

Written mostly after the death of Claude Lewis in 1957, this sub-series includes a single letter written by Michael Lewis.

Sub-Series 6: Judy Jennison Lewis

These letters were written by Freeman Lewis's new wife, Judy Jennison Lewis, to Mary Lewis, Freeman's mother. These describe life during the Great Depression in New York City.

Sub-Series 7: Sinclair Lewis

The letters are organized by receipent, then listed individually by date. The place from where the letters were written are also listed. Most of the letters here that he wrote went to members of the Claude Lewis family and his father.

In these letters, Sinclair discussed his recent travels and what he did during those travels, especially those to his father. Sinclair did inquire about Claude's family, often asking his older brother to travel with him. He also asked about the well-being of Freeman, Virginia, and Isabel - he offered advice about schooling (especially regarding Freeman), as well as career choices.

Sinclair did write of his work, including Mantrap, Dodsworth on Broadway as a play, Jayhawker, and It Can't Happen Here.

Sub-Series 8: Virginia Lewis

The letters in this sub-series were mostly written from the 1950s and on, though there are a few items dated before then. Many deal with the legacy of Sinclair Lewis especially about the records held by the Claude Lewis famliy. Especially noteworthy are the letters from Michael Lewis, as well as those from Marcella Powers.

Sub-Series 9: Dorothy Thompson

Only a small numbers of item in this sub-series, the correspondence is from Dorothy Thompson, Sinclair Lewis's second wife. Interesting items include a postcard with the likeness of Adolph Hitler, which was sent to Sinclair Lewis in the mid-1930s, as well as correspondence with Claude Lewis's second wife, Helen, regarding the decision to bury Sinclair Lewis's ashes in Sauk Centre after his 1951 death.

Sub-Series 10: Other Correspondence

This sub-series contains other correspondence received by the Lewis family.

Sub-Series 11: Acquistion of the Claude Lewis Family Papers

These records document the appraisal of value and the purchase of the bulk of the Claude Lewis Family to St. Cloud State by Freeman, Viriginia, and Isabel Lewis.

Series 2: Isabel Lewis Agrell subject files

These records contain mostly correspondence between Isabel Lewis and her family and other outsiders, almost exclusiverly dated after 1950. Notable correspondents include Ida and Charles Compton, Minnesota author John Koblas (who wrote several books about Sinclair Lewis), Lesley Lewis, and Marcella Powers.

Most notable are the letters from Lewis family members. Kay Cardew, grandmother of Lesley Lewis, wrote Isabel encouraging her to be in contact with Lesley, since her mother and father were deceased. Lesley Lewis wrote Isabel about her life and early career, while Jennifer Lewis Newsome reported on the health and, later, death of Michael Lewis. Marcella Powers, though not a Lewis family member, wrote of her life after her friendship with Sinclair Lewis ended. Mary Branham would write Isabel reporting on the death of Marcella, her close friend, in March 1985.

Isabel and her sister Virignia also organized a reception at St. Cloud State in August 1986 in which they gifted a 24 volume set of Sinclair Lewis works, edited by Japanese professor Hiroshige Yoshida. Included here are the correspondence regarding this reception, brochures from the event, the guestbook signed, and the audio recorded. The reception was held in the Lewis House (then known as the Alumni House), the former home of Claude Lewis and his family.

Series 3: Travel Journals and Related Material

This series contains materials related to the travels of Claude Lewis, who traveled with his first wife Mary and his second wife Helen, as well as his younger brother Sinclair. Material after 1957 were created by Helen when she traveled after the death of Claude.

Material here, organized by date of trip, are varied. These mostly contain typescript accounts that appeared in Claude's journal. There are some handwritten travel journals that were transcribed and are here also.

Most notable are the two trips that Claude took with his brother Sinclair - Saskatchewan in 1924 and Europe in 1949. The Saskatchewan trip contains a typescript of Claude's journal, which appeared twice in published form - Sinclair Lewis & Mantrap: The Saskatchewan Trip, edited by John Koblas and Dave Page in 1985, and Treaty Trip, which appeared in 1959. Sinclair used information from this trip for his 1926 book Mantrap. A photo album, which includes images of Sinclair, is included here, too.

After the death of his first wife Mary in 1949, Claude traveled to Europe with his brother Sinclair in 1949. A typescript of Claude's travel journal details life on the road with his famous younger brother. Claude would never see his brother alive again - Sinclair Lewis died in Rome in January 1951.

Series 4: Images

Material in this series are images of Claude Lewis and his extended family, including brother Sinclair and father Edwin, as well as early images of the sons of Sinclair, Wells and Michael. Images are organized by subject.

Photos are numerous for Claude Lewis and his family, including several formal portraits, though it does not include son Freeman.

Other notable images include Edwin and his second wife Isabel, Winnie Lewis, wife of Fred Lewis, Claude and Sinclair's oldest brother, and Sinclair's first wife Grace Hegger Lewis visiting Sauk Centre, MN. There are several images of Sinclair with Marcella Powers, including an autographed portrait of Sinclair that he gave Marcella in September 1939 and photos of them performing together in the play Shadow and Substance. There are images of Sinclair at his home in Duluth in the mid-1940s, as well as an image of Sinclair as a baby and portraits of him while attending Yale University.

People who were identified were included in the notes field for specific folders.

Series 5: Other Personal Papers

This series contains a wife variety of material related to the Claude Lewis family, as well as items from or related to Sinclair Lewis.

There are many items here, including account books calculating the cost of the higher education of Freeman, Virginia, and Isabel Lewis, a journal describing life at a lake cabin, wedding announcements, obituaries, and two semi-published works by Isabel Lewis Agrell and Mary Agrrell Stroeing about Sinclair Lewis and Viriginia Lewis.

Particularily significant is a typescript of a play, Angela is Twenty-Two, written by Sinclair Lewis and actress Fay Wray. Other significant items include the bill for the funeral of older brother Fred Lewis in 1946, program for Sinclair Lewis's memorial service in January 1951 in Sauk Centre, MN, shortly after his death, and a silk scarf given by Grace Hegger Lewis to Mary Lewis in the 1920s.

These oral histories were performed in 38 different community churches in central Minnesota during the late 1970s.  Most of the churches are in or around the St. Cloud area or Brainerd between Interstates 94 and 35.  Ordinarily, the interviews include the church pastor and several elderly members with long family ties to the church.  All the interviews begin with the basic biographical data of the participants including birth dates, the reason their family immigrated to the area and where they came from, length of association with the church, and ethnicity.

The ethnic backgrounds of the congregations and communities are discussed in many of the oral histories.  Attention is given to the ethnic foundations of each church. Americanization of the congregation appears to be significant in many of the histories.  Frequent mention is made of the efforts and influence of church groups, particularly women’s groups, and the concern over an aging congregation without new members joining.  Several interesting anecdotes appear as part of the personal histories, church history, or discussion of the community. The issue of language is particularly noteworthy as almost all the interviews discuss the switch to English from original immigrant languages for Protestant services or from Latin to English for Catholic mass.

Many histories describe the past and present efforts to maintain the church.  Early construction, maintaining church membership (particularly youth), splits and conflicts between churches and denominations over doctrine, and how the changes of the 20th century impacted their community and church.  Notable accomplishments of the churches are also described including community involvement, ministry and counseling, missionary work both locally and internationally, and continual improvement of facilities.  Church association with education is a common topic either as established church or parochial schools, Sunday schools, or as temporary efforts in the early parts of the 20th century.

Transcripts of the interviews are available unless otherwise noted below.  The audio tapes for some of these oral histories are presently unavailable.  Those histories are mentioned in the individual finding aids below.  Most of these histories do have full transcripts available, however.  Some folders include photographs of the church, interiors, grounds, and occasionally interview participants.

A question mark (?) for date of death does not necessarily indicate the participant is deceased.

The Nelsen Papers consist mainly of constituent correspondences, memos, and news releases that relate to the his time as a Minnesota state representative. The majority of these items date between 1979 and 1982. The major topics covered are: education, energy, state budget, taxation, and transportation.

Series 1: Architectural Drawings

This series contains architectural drawings related to current buildings and buildings that used to be on St. Cloud State’s campus. The collection features many projects from the early 20th century as well as several from the 1960s when St. Cloud State’s campus expanded significantly. Since many of these buildings are gone or have changed, these drawings are especially informative with regard to what these buildings originally looked like at the time of construction. Nearly all of the drawings show the building either as they were intended to be constructed or were constructed. There are few drawings that show changes to the building AFTER they were constructed.

Construction documents, the detailed plans and specifications used to construct a building or structure, make up the bulk of materials in these campus building projects. Some projects may include earlier drawings from the Schematic and Design Development phases, where projects go from concept to refined design before final approval, or later As Built drawings that show a building’s appearance after construction, which might differ from what Construction Documents indicate. Architectural drawings have their own unique numbering system. Older projects in this series may follow a simple numerical sequence. More recent projects follow an alphanumeric system. Drawings with sheet numbers starting with A are architectural, S are structural, M are mechanical, E are electrical, and SK are sketch. The majority of the drawings are copies or prints made from originals that would have been drawn on vellum or similar material or copies printed from an original digital format.

Series 2: Architectural Renderings

This series contains architectural renderings related to buildings on St. Cloud State’s campus. They were primarily used by the architectural designers for presentation purposes to convey a sense of what a finished project might look like. Renderings in this series include painted and hand drawn perspectives and prints of 3D computer models. Not all of the designs in the series were built.

The collection contains the annual reports from 1997/98 to 2010/11 fiscal years.

This collection contains one photo album of images taken by St. Cloud State alum Andrew Lindgren between 1906 and 1909. These images comprise of most of the early images of St. Cloud State.

The majority of the photographs were taken of campus and the surrounding St. Cloud area. The album also includes photographs from cities in Minnesota, including St. Paul, Minneapolis, Silver Creek, Watab, Stillwater, Buffalo, Monticello, Spicer, and Verndale, as well as spots across the United States and Canada. These include Salt Lake City, Portland (Oregon), Annapolis (Maryland), Cripple Creek (Colorado), Seattle, Denver, New Orleans, New York City, Cape Cod, and Hawaii. There are also images from British Columbia and Novia Scotia in Canada as well as Panama.

Some copies, via photography of the originals in which negatives were created, were made sometime in the 1980s and 1990s from the photo album by St. Cloud State. Only a selection was done, especially those images of campus and around St. Cloud. The printed image copies are in order as they appear in the album.

This collection consists of three folders of papers of Andrew A. Brown. Brown lived in Douglas County and dealt in buying and selling land. There are numerous land grants and certificates. Also of interest are the correspondence from John Lind, who was a US congressman, a death certificate of Brown's wife, and a photograph of the family.

This collection contains information on the Minnesota Chapter of the American Association of University Professors. The majority of the contents dates from 1976-1989. The collection consists of minutes from the meetings, quarterly membership rosters from the Minnesota Chapter, the Minnesota Academe Newsletter, treasurer’s reports, and grant requests from conferences.

The Patton Papers contain mainly correspondence between the Representative and his constituents, government reports, newspaper clippings, and the minutes of the Committee on Local and Urban Affairs. The majority of these items date between 1974 and 1977. Some items of interest within the collection are: the Board of Regents 1975 Election, the Metrodome stadium Bill, and general information on the Metropolitan Stadium.

The Alfred Grewe Papers consists of approximately 6,200 photographic 35 mm color slides (with scanned copies) depicting St. Cloud State University classroom and field studies from the 1960s to the 1990s. The slides were scanned by Grewe's former student Mary Stefanski.

In addition to several sets of classroom lectures on key subject matter of his SCSU courses, the image collection includes a significant component of Grewe's’s research with bald eagles. He was one of the first to document the status and habits of eagles prior to their endangered species listing in 1967. As part of this work, Grewe was one of the first to suggest that chemicals in the environment were likely responsible for the critical thinning of eagle egg shells, a major cause of the inability of these birds to reproduce at a rate sufficient to sustain an already much diminished population.

Grewe was also a preeminent authority on American white pelicans, initiating and leading the world’s longest running pelican banding study at Marsh Lake in Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management Area near Appleton, Minnesota. Here he documented the breeding colony’s rise from two pairs to over 20,000, the largest American white pelican colony in the world for many years.

Other topics documented by the images here include sandhill cranes, owls of various species, great blue herons and other colonial nesting waterbirds, etc. Many wildlife species are depicted, including from his many graduate students' research / theses topics. Images portray Grewe or his students conducting “wildlife work” such as capturing and banding birds, working hunter check stations, conducting radio telemetry, etc. and overviews of habitat restoration practices from Federal wildlife refuges and State wildlife management areas. Several of the previous Grewe students shown in the collection became prominent names in the wildlife arena in future years, something Grewe gave him more pride than anything else he had accomplished.

Original text written on the slides was primarily from Grewe himself. However, many (if not most) of the slides have no written information on them.

The digital scans are organized and named as such (as written by Mary Stefanski):

The image file names include the following format: Group, Slide Number, and any Information written on the slide. Any dates, names, etc. within ( ) were not written on the original slide and were added for clarification from the date printed or embossed on the slide when it was developed. For example: Crex Birds IMAG0065 Injured Cooper Hawk (Owen Schmidt 1971). The original slide can be found within the larger collection in the Crex Meadows Birds folder in slot 65 and contains the writing “Injured Cooper Hawk.” (Owen Schmidt 1971) was added to the electronic file name based on the identification of Owen and the date, 1971, stamped on the cardboard slide holder.

This collection conatins a wide variety of material. These include a biographical booklet on Albertina Anderson compiled by her grand-nephew, and records of her education at St. Cloud Teachers College, University of Minnesota, and Columbia University such as transcripts, class slips, and a notebook filled with class notes. Also present are her records of employment at St. Cloud Teachers College as well as records regarding retirement funds. Lastly, the collection includes Andersons hand written mathematic lesson plans, teaching materials, and few miscellaneous writings showcasing the academic standards of the time.