Title: Louis Allis Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1843-1950

Creator:

• Allis, Louis, 1866-1950

Call Number: Milwaukee Micro 71; Micro 2036; PH Milwaukee Micro 71

Quantity: 11 reels of microfilm (35mm), 318 negatives, and 32 copy negatives

Repository:

Housed at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries’ Archives Department / Milwaukee Area Research Center; owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

UW-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives / Milwaukee Area Research Ctr. (Map)

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

Abstract:

Personal papers, mainly 1883-1938, of a member of a prominent Milwaukee family and president of the Louis Allis Company. The collection consists almost entirely of outgoing personal letters, although occasional items relate to financial investments, real estate management, and oversight of the Mechanical Appliance Co. (the forerunner of the Louis Allis Company). Only scattered letters relate to the E.P. Allis Co. or to Allis family interests in its successor company, the Allis-Chalmers Company. A large portion of the personal correspondence concerns Allis' first wife Carol Yates (from whom he was divorced in 1907); the rearing and education of their son, Edward P. Allis III; the management of the Louis Allis home; golf and other recreational activities; the beginning of the Milwaukee Country Club; the purchase and maintenance of automobiles; and the lives of other members of the Allis and Yates families. Six scrapbooks document the family's interest in golf, with scattered items relating to the E. P. Allis and Louis Allis companies, and the extended family. All of this material is available only on microfilm. Also on microfilm but partially copied photographically is an album of interior views of the E.P. Allis Co. factory, 1894. The collection also includes negatives selected from Allis' work as an amateur photographer which are not on microfilm and available only in Madison.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-micr2036

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Louis Allis was born in Milwaukee on December 30, 1866, the ninth of twelve children born to Edward P. and Margaret Allis. He attended Markham Academy in Milwaukee and received a degree in civil engineering from Pennsylvania Military College in 1888. After graduation, Allis returned to Milwaukee and began his business career as a clerk at E. P. Allis Co. He left the company in 1901, shortly before it became part of the Allis-Chalmers Company, and for several years is thought to have engaged in supervision of the timber and mining holdings of the E. P. Allis estate. In 1901 he invested in the recently formed Mechanical Appliance Co., a Milwaukee manufacturer of small direct-current motors. By eliminating line shafts and drive belts, the Mechanical Appliance Co. pioneered in the development of industrial electric motors and became an important contributor to safety and efficiency. In 1903 Allis became president of the firm, which was renamed the Louis Allis Company in 1922. He continued as president until his retirement in 1945.

In 1890 Louis Allis married Carol Yates, the daughter of Col. Theodore Yates (1832-1899), the commandant of the Milwaukee Soldiers Home. The couple's only child, Edward P. III (Ned), was born in 1892. Soon thereafter Mrs. Allis left Milwaukee, apparently suffering from depression.

In 1896 Mrs. E. P. Allis returned from a European trip with a set of golf clubs for her son; this gift was to have a significant impact on family life. Louis promptly joined the newly-organized Milwaukee Country Club, and in his personal correspondence he admitted “I have the [golf] fever so badly that the family laugh at me continually.” Louis Allis became a leading member of the country club, facilitating the move from the city's upper east side to a tract of land several miles north of the city limits. When he died in 1950 Milwaukee newspapers referred to Allis as the “Father of Golf in Wisconsin.” Ned Allis excelled at the sport at a young age, and he was a prominent amateur player throughout his life.

After several unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation Louis and Carol Allis divorced in 1907, and in 1911 Louis married Louise Hegen. The couple had four children: Louis, Jr. (b. 1916); John W. (b. 1918); William W. (b. 1921); and Robert T. (b. 1925). In 1927 Allis sold the mansion he had built in 1912 in the Yankee Hill neighborhood at Juneau Place and Martin Street to the city of Milwaukee. (The house was subsequently razed in order to expand Juneau Park). The family moved to the 112 acre estate on Dean Road near the country club which had first been purchased in 1918 as a summer residence.

The Louis Allis Papers consist of Correspondence, Scrapbooks, and Photographs. The correspondence and scrapbooks are available only on microfilm.

The six Scrapbooks document family activities from 1883 to 1950. The contents largely focus on social and athletic events of the Louis Allis family (particularly Ned's accomplishments on the links), but there are also materials relating to other members of the family and the Mechanical Appliance Co., and to a lesser extent, the E.P. Allis Co. Items of a business nature include executive memoranda, annual reports, and letters exchanged between E. P. and Louis in the 1880s. Other important documents include a series of photographs (only on microfilm) of Armistice Day in downtown Milwaukee in 1918, numerous snapshots of the Mechanical Appliance Co., and a constitution of the anti-union American Constitutional League of Wisconsin (reel 1, frame 470). Also of interest are steel engravings of the interior of the Reliance Works, a transcribed diary of a family camping trip in the west in 1884-1885 (reel 1, frame 5 and 448), an 1893 booklet Allis Genealogy by Charles Allis (reel 1, frame 109), and recollections of employment at the E. P. Allis Company at the West Water Street location by James Laherty who began work for the company in 1861 (reel 1, frame 433). About business operations is a 1931 speech by Louis Allis on unemployment (reel 2, frame 349) and a report on World War II operations of the company (reel 2, frame 553). An interesting July 9, 1939 news item (reel 2, frame 532) mentions an 1847 company record book that was apparently discovered when the Reliance Works were razed. Throughout the volumes are numerous Allis Family obituaries. Scrapbook 6 contains a letter from E. P. Allis at Geneva City that is dated March 1, 1843.

The Correspondence is arranged into an incomplete run of small stylus books (numbers 1-3 are missing), letterbooks, and loose correspondence. Other than their difference in size, the distinction between the stylus books and the standard-sized letterbooks is not clear. It is likely that Allis carried the stylus books with him or used them at home, while the letterbooks were used at his office. From 1894 to 1899 the two groups overlap, with both containing similar types of correspondence. Thereafter the letterbooks contain a large quantity of business letters.

The stylus books are entirely handwritten, and they contain truly personal letters to his first wife, Allis family relatives, and Yates family in-laws. A small number of letters in the stylus books can be typified as personal business; these letters primarily relate to home construction and management. Only occasional letters relate to the E.P. Allis Company.

The letterbooks cover a later period, and over time they become dominated by typewritten letters of a business nature. These letters are thought to have been dictated to a secretary which may explain why even those written to Louis' mother and siblings, and later to Ned, are much less intimate than correspondence in the stylus books. The letterbooks cease in April 1912 when Allis moved from his office at the Railway Exchange to the Mechanical Appliance Co.

The stylus books begin with the Allis' engagement and end shortly after their 1898 reconciliation. Although the reason for the couple's estrangement is unspecified, Louis' letters are nonetheless a rare chronicle of marital problems at a time when divorce was rare. In addition, because Louis Allis was chiefly responsible for the upbringing of their son during the periods of their separation, the details of his attentive childrearing reported to his wife are an unusual account of a single father at the turn of the century.

The letterbooks begin about the time of the formation of the Allis-Chalmers Co. in 1901. References to family involvement in the company is primarily limited to declarations of dividends and general assessments of the company's status. More numerous is correspondence about Louis' management of the unsuccessful Elizabeth Mining Company, his efforts to oversee the Harmony Mills Co. for his brother Jere, and miscellaneous real estate investments in Milwaukee and elsewhere. Correspondence relating to the Mechanical Appliance Co. becomes increasingly frequent after 1903, although there is nothing to suggest that he was responsible for day-to-day management of the concern during the period. From the fall of 1908 until the fall of 1909, Louis and Ned Allis traveled in Europe and no correspondence in the collection relates to that year. (There are, however, several photographs from this trip.) After their return to Milwaukee, Ned enrolled at the Milton Academy in Massachusetts and thereafter, Louis began a weekly correspondence with his son which continued during Ned's matriculation at Harvard. These letters, which have an almost diary-like character, provide a detailed account of the senior Allis' activities. Here and throughout the other correspondence of the period, there are frequent mentions of his enjoyment of golf and the development of the Milwaukee Country Club, the purchase and use of automobiles, the management of his real estate holdings, and the business of the Mechanical Appliance Co.

The loose correspondence in the collection (also only available on microfilm) consists primarily of letters from Carol Allis written shortly before their divorce, together with some copies of letters from Louis apparently cut from a letterbook that is not included in the collection. A letter of December 30, 1905 written shortly before their final break provides information about their relationship that is only obliquely referred to in the other letters in the collection.

Louis Allis' personal Photograph collection originally consisted of about 3000 4x5 glass and nitrate negatives that documented family activities from 1875 to 1938 and an album of shop views of the E. P. Allis Co. taken about October 15, 1894. The entire album of shop views is available on microfilm (reel 2), although there are copy negatives for only 32 views.

The personal photographs have been extensively weeded and only about 300 have been retained in the holdings at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Included are portraits (including the entire family of Edward P. Allis, circa 1875) and candid shots of Allis family members (all of these are taken after 1890 when Louis first acquired his camera); views of interiors and exteriors of Allis homes in Milwaukee and River Hills; candids of activities of the children of Louis Allis (especially Edward P. Allis III); and travel to the Chicago Worlds Fair, Europe, and the United States. Other special topics include Camp Douglas during World War I, Holy Hill, Wisconsin Dells, the Wright Brothers (in Italy), as well as interior decoration, golf, and children's toys. Only a few of these photographs relate to the Louis Allis Co. and none relate to Allis Chalmers or the E. P. Allis Co. The 1890-1919 photographs were clearly taken by Louis Allis, but after his second marriage the quantity and quality of the domestic photography declines, and it is possible that some of the comparatively few items from the teens, 1920s and 1930s were taken by Mrs. Allis.

Acquisition Information

Photographs presented and papers loaned for copying by William Allis, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1994. Accession Number: M94-224

Processing Information

Processed and arranged for microfilming in 1994-1995 by Carolyn J. Mattern.

Milwaukee Micro 71/Micro 2036	Series: Scrapbooks
Reel   1 Frame   1	Scrapbook 1, 1883-1915
Reel   1 Frame   317	Scrapbook 2, 1883-1920 (mainly 1915-1920)
Reel   2 Frame   1	Scrapbook 3, 1920-1925
Reel   2 Frame   180	Scrapbook 4, 1925-1931
Reel   2 Frame   348	Scrapbook 5, 1931-1938
Reel   2 Frame   516	Scrapbook 5, 1843-1950 (mainly 1938-1950)
	Series: Correspondence	⇧
	Stylus Books
Reel   3 Frame   1	No. 4, 1894 Oct.-Nov.
Reel   3 Frame   70	No. 5, 1894 Nov.-1895 April
Reel   3 Frame   147	No. 6, 1895 April-May
Reel   3 Frame   197	No. 7, 1895 May-Aug.
Reel   3 Frame   279	No. 8, 1895 Aug.-Dec.
Reel   3 Frame   364	No. 9, 1895 Dec.-1896 April
Reel   3 Frame   445	No. 10, 1896 April-Aug.
Reel   3 Frame   539	No. 11, 1896 Aug.-Dec.
Reel   3 Frame   628	No. 12, 1896 Dec.-1897 July
Reel   3 Frame   710	No. 13, 1897 July-1896 Jan.
Reel   3 Frame   794	No. 14, 1898 May-1899 Nov.
Reel   3 Frame   875	No. 15, 1899 Jan.-Nov. Note: Index at end.
Reel   3 Frame   950	Traveling book, 1896 March-1899 May
Reel   3 Frame   979	Traveling book, 1903 Nov.-1905 April
Reel   3 Frame   1026	Miscellaneous letters, 1903-1905
	Letterbooks
Reel   4 Frame   1	1890 Sept. 9-29
Reel   4 Frame   54	No. 2, 1890 Jan.-1893 June
Reel   5	No. 3, 1893 June-1901 Nov.
Reel   6	1901 Nov.-1903 April Note: Index at end.
Reel   7	1903 April-1904 Oct.
Reel   8	1904 Oct.-1907 Feb.
Reel   9	1907 March-1909 Dec.
Reel   10	1909 Dec.-1912 Jan.
Reel   11 Frame   1	1912 Jan.-April
Reel   11 Frame   321	Miscellaneous, 1903
Reel   11 Frame   337	Loose Correspondence, 1904-1906
	Series: Photographs	⇧
	E.P. Allis Co. shop album, 1894
Reel   2 Frame   571	Microfilmed album
WHi(X3)49253-49284	Selected Copy Negatives
Folder   1	Reference Prints Note: These are prints of the X3 copy negatives above plus other images as they are printed.
PH Milwaukee Micro 71	Family Photographs, 1875-1938 Note: An item level inventory of these photographs is available with the paper copy of this finding aid.
Box   1-4	Negatives (Glass plate)
Box   5-7	Negatives (Film base)