This collection is primarily the records of the Menominee Bay Shore Lumber Company documenting business activities of the company from April 18, 1881, to June 14, 1905. In the unbound papers are the Company's records of the hours worked by individual employees on dams, with the wage rates and monthly pay, from Dec. 20, 1890 to Dec. 8, 1894, as well as about a hundred individual time slips of the T. W. Harvey Lumber Company; a 2-page history of the company written by Harry McGraw, Jr., in 1963; an obituary of Harry McGraw, Sr. (1866-1947); and photographs and clippings including annotations by Harry McGraw, Jr. Seven journals and eight ledgers record transactions of the Menominee Bay Shore Lumber Company from 1881 to 1905. Records also include the company's trial balance books, a cash book, inventory records, and a time book.
The two volumes of inventory records cover the entire period from 1881 to 1905 and contain a complete record of the company's physical assets, including land, logs and lumber, horses, mules and oxen, harness, saws, axe handles, chairs, buggies, blankets, pillows, and sundry equipment used in camps, mills, and offices of lumber companies of that era.
Two volumes of sales records, 1888-1905, contain sales summaries by months and years. In volume 25, 1899-1905, a recapitulation of sales appears at the end of each year, with an annual summary of each type of timber cut and sawed the previous year. With each sale recorded there is posted the customer's name, number of freight car or name of the vessel on which the order was shipped, and the destination.
Volume 10 is a ledger of individual accounts, some of which appear to be employees' pay records, with deductions for board and for cash withdrawals.
Entries in the minute book of the North Branch Pine Improvement Company indicate a basic relationship between this company and the Menominee Bay Shore Lumber Company. The minute book, journal, and ledger record the activities of the North Branch Pine Improvement Company from its incorporation in 1890 until its dissolution in 1904. It is signed by directors H. E. McGraw and M. J. Quinlan. The unbound papers include seven letters relating to the business of the North Branch Pine Improvement Company and a few bills, notices, and legal documents relating to the business of that firm.
A policy register of insurance agent S. A. McGraw of Soperton contains many insurance records of the Menominee Bay Shore Lumber Company, churches, schools and other properties in the surrounding area, for the period of February 9, 1912 to January 7, 1924.
The letterbook of the Michigan Fuel Company of Soperton contains routine business correspondence from October 18, 1906 through May 14, 1907, and a single letter dated June 14, 1914. The final letter describes an accident in a sawmill, in which a man was sawed in two. These letters seem to be unrelated to the Menominee Bay Shore Lumber Company, except for the signatures of H. E. McGraw and M. J. Quinlan.
