The Charles I. Brigham Papers are mainly records of the operation of the family farm, a family-operated creamery, and a cheese factory all located at Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. There are detailed crop notes, inventories, time books, cash books, journals, and records of improvements, expenses and purchases, and of general household and farm expenses accrued. Also preserved here are personal correspondence, diaries, and other family-originated records and ephemera. Arrangement of the papers is generally chronological under each category or type of material.
The correspondence file includes letters, letterpress books, and volumes recording lists or copies of letters received. The letters have been arranged by recipient and correspondent and chronologically thereunder. Preserved here are letters to the Ilsley children, the Brigham children, Jerome Ripley Brigham, Ellen D. Ilsley, David Brigham, and Charles I. Brigham. There are lists and manuscript copies of letters received by Charles I. Brigham. The letters concern personal, family, and business affairs.
The diaries of Charles I. and Jerome R. Brigham include personal observations and judgments on events of that time. Jerome Brigham's diaries are for the years 1835 and 1836; Charles I.'s diaries date from 1871 to 1887. The order of arrangement is chronological for the diaries of each author separately.
The “ledgers” (1884-1935) of Charles I. Brigham lack the years 1885, 1887, 1908, 1914, 1916-1918, and 1920-1934. There is an 1890 cash book (“ledger”) kept by Jerome R. Brigham filed here.
Charles I. Brigham's nine notebooks (1896-1910, and undated) contain miscellaneous jottings. In a notebook dated 1896 to 1910, Brigham has listed projects for “rainy days.” Filed here also are two school penmanship notebooks of Jerome R. Brigham (1833), and two writing notebooks from Charles I. Brigham's school days (1874-1875), and zoology notes (1881) taken under Edward Asahel Birge (professor of limnology, University of Wisconsin, 1875-1939).
The other financial records include family financial records of general household expenses, account books, personal financial computations, and a record of fines; and farm records of “receipts and expenses,” expenses and purchases, and cash books.
Business records include financial accounts of the Blue Mounds Congregational Church, 1892-1911, and articles of organization and minutes of the Blue Mounds Cheese Factory, the Blue Mounds Creamery, the West Blue Mounds Association of the Patrons of Industry, and the Blue Mounds Percheron Association.
Farm records consist of a general record, a record of improvements, a live-stock record, time books, a record of wages, a journal, cattle feed ration notes, and inventories (1905 and 1906).
Also included with the papers are miscellaneous family-collected items, e.g., a copy of Charles I. Brigham's obituary; a certificate, oration, and eulogy of Jerome R. Brigham; and one folder of newspaper clippings relating to railroads.
