The Fred George Dickerson Papers are a small, incomplete collection arranged alphabetically by subject and document type. Although Fred George Dickerson lived in the Chicago area for most of his adult life, the collection contains substantial information about his youth and family background which was rooted in Appleton, Wisconsin and on the Dickerson and Porter families. For students of invention and technology the collection includes useful information about a family of inventors and their successes and failures. Included are family correspondence, fragmentary business papers of both Henry and Fred George Dickerson, local history ephemera, scrapbooks, writings and notes. A portrait of Fred Dickerson has been filed in the Visual Materials Name File.
Family correspondence, which makes up the majority of the collection, consists of letters and postcards from friends, family, and other associates. Many of these letters are to Harriet from members of her family in the east. Still others were written to Fred from relatives and friends after her death. Several interesting letters and a blueprint concern the construction of a summer cabin at Three Lakes, Wisconsin. Business papers document the family's inventiveness and both Henry and Fred G. Dickerson are represented. Although limited and fragmentary, the correspondence concerning Henry Dickerson has considerable interest because of its early date, its basis in Wisconsin, and his apparent lack of success. Through letters, financial notes, and broadsides, the papers document the way in which he attempted to market his method for processing steel (patented 1868). Additional correspondence and legal documents concern the manufacture of an 1875 invention, the “Dickerson shutter worker,” by William Johnson of Milwaukee. Legal documents, deeds, and insurance policies document his ownership of the Appleton Novelty Works and acquisition of real estate, and they hint at his financial problems. The collection also contains his 1907 and 1910 diaries. In 1907 Henry resided in Niagara Falls, but by 1910 he had removed to Canada and his business address in that volume is listed as the Dickerson All Metal Pulp Screen Co. His daily notations about work on the development of machinery involved in paper manufacturing are informative and readable.
The career of Fred Dickerson is also sporadically covered by the general correspondence, but one entire folder covers his association with J.M. Patterson's Illinois-Georgia Pecan Company and the Paper Shell Pecan Growers Association. This association included Dickerson's investment in company lands as well as development of a nut harvesting machine invented by him. Information about Fred's inventions is scattered elsewhere in the collection. There are engineering drawings apparently prepared in 1920 for a parts catalog, a list of machine parts and associated costs, a draft catalog (1912) and printed catalog “C” for the milk filler, and photocopied advertising brochures. One of the few pieces of correspondence on this machine is a detailed letter from the Helvetia Milk Condensing Co., marketers of Pet Milk, concerning their experimentation with Dickerson's machine. A scrapbook contains numerous examples of advertising blotters/calendars distributed by the Dickerson Company, 1914-1917, which contain scattered information about the company. (This scrapbook also contains information about the Schaeffer Manufacturing Company, a competitor in Berlin, Wisconsin.) About Dickerson's invention of a stair-climbing machine, the collection contains a notebook of sketches and calculations. This machine is thought to have been invented when his wife became incapacitated. A selection of miscellaneous writings includes a typescript essay, “How to Invent.” Also received with the Dickerson papers was an example of the pin clock he invented. This item (F59-69) is housed at the Historical Society's Stonefield Village historic site.
Additional material of interest about Fred Dickerson--although not concerning his inventions--is a folder on his support for “the Chicago Way” to avoid labor unrest. Included are two brochures detailing his ideas, comments about the plan received from many fellow Chicago businessmen, designs for a promotional stamp, and copies of articles about the plan by Porter Kent which appeared in The Unionist. The majority of this labor material dates to 1915.
A highlight of the collection is high quality paper ephemera primarily documenting Appleton and its churches and schools and Lawrence College and its musical groups. Included are programs, tickets, advertising, and business receipts, all foldered as loose items. A related scrapbook contains numerous items about Lawrence College as well as posters for several national tours of the Mandolin Club for which Fred Dickerson was the manager-director. Also of interest here are Lawrence College programs dating from 1859 to 1862 which reveal the activities of Henry Dickerson as an early student at the college. Additional ephemera includes an 1886 contract for the purchase of a Singer sewing machine signed by Mrs. Dickerson, material about Dickerson's later civic activities in Chicago, and mailings about the Wisconsin Colleges Associated Campaign, a joint effort by nine private Wisconsin colleges (including Lawrence) to raise funds in Chicago in 1919.
