Matthew S. Dudgeon, son of a Methodist minister, was born in 1871 at Madison, Wisconsin. He was educated in the schools of Madison and in Kansas; and in 1895 received his Bachelor's degree from Baker University, Baldwin, Kansas. He taught one year in a college in South Dakota, then turned to the law as his vocation, receiving his law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1895.
After first starting to practice law in Chicago, Dudgeon set up his office in Madison, where he continued to practice until 1909. Between 1899 and 1903 he was Dane County prosecuting attorney, and served in the state assembly from 1903 to 1904. From 1907 to 1909 he specialized in revaluation work for the state tax commission, and with John R. Commons taught a university course on public utilities and the law.
In 1909 Dudgeon was appointed secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, where his responsibilities included that of executive officer and drafter of legislation. Under the Commission at that time were the Library School as well as the Legislative Reference Library and the Traveling Library. Dudgeon served in different capacities as an officer in the American Library Association. In 1917-1918 he worked with the American Library Association as field representative for camp libraries, and for the first half of 1919 was overseas representative charged with the problem of distributing a large shipment of books sent from the United States.
In 1913 his interest in the cooperative movement took him to Europe to study cooperatives more thoroughly. From this experience he wrote a series of twenty articles which were distributed by the Western Newspaper Union.
In 1920 Dudgeon became librarian for the city of Milwaukee and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1941. He instituted parcel post delivery of books to Milwaukee's outlying areas and developed branch libraries.
In 1900, just after service in the Spanish American War, Dudgeon married Mabel Cunningham, daughter of a supreme court justice in Kansas. The couple had two daughters, Lucille and Edith. Matthew S. Dudgeon was a brother of R. B. Dudgeon, superintendent of the Madison schools during the first part of the century. He was known as an independent in politics, and was long a director of the Wisconsin Life Insurance Company. Dudgeon died in 1949 at Milwaukee.
Correspondence in this collection begins with 1910 and covers the years when Dudgeon was with the Library Commission. There are not items pertaining to his work after 1920 as librarian for the city of Milwaukee. There is a little correspondence connected with his 1913 trip to Europe to study cooperatives. Also, there is some relating to his service for camp libraries in 1917-1918.
The final three boxes of the collection contain articles and notes.
