The Beggs collection is a small group of material that was acquired by the Historical Society in 1957 when “Beggs Isle,” the family home in Oconomowoc, was turned over to a local hospital. The collection consists largely of business correspondence, photographs, personal financial records, and subject files.
Photographs received with the papers, which are perhaps the most generally useful portion of the collection, are divided into eight lots that document the staff and offices of the Edison Electric Company of Chicago; TMERL facilities and a staff outing shortly after the turn of the century; and his Beggs' Isle estate in Oconomowoc. The photographs of the Chicago offices, the TMERL Public Service Building, and the 1906 staff outing at Waukesha Beach are very high quality visual documentation. Portraits of Beggs were separated to the Visual Materials Name File. All of the lots and the material from the Name File are available on microfilm in the collection.
The subject files consist of publications and memorabilia of a few of the firms with which Beggs was associated, primarily the Edison Electric Light Company and its Chicago office, the St. Louis Car Company, and The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Co. The Edison Company is documented by a scrapbook indicating prices for the equipment Edison distributed to its system. The Chicago office is documented solely by the photographs mentioned above. TMERL is documented by annual financial reports, 1897-1901 and 1907-1909, several alternative financial plans developed in 1909, memorabilia, and the photograph lots also noted above. Also part of the subject files are receipts and bills documenting the personal expenditures of Beggs and his daughter. In the absence of any other personal information, this file contains a good deal of information about Beggs' life. Beggs' daughter married Robert McCulloch, and he and their son, John I. Beggs McCulloch, are represented in one of the subject files.
The Correspondence series is divided into two sections: correspondence that was received loose and two letter boxes. Both document the 1890s. Generally, the loose material documents the earlier years of the decade, with the boxed material documenting the later years. Both primarily refer to the period when Beggs managed the Chicago Edison Electric Company, although the majority refer to other companies within the Edison system with which Beggs had responsibilities. By far the most extensively documented is the Harrisburg Electric Company. Very little refers to his responsibility for The Milwaukee Electric Light and Railway Co. for which he assumed responsibility in 1897. A few letters pertain to his interest in the Appleton Electric Company.
