During the years immediately following the deaths of Henry Demarest Lloyd (September 28, 1903) and of his wife (December 29, 1906), his papers were controlled by his sister, Mrs. Caro (Caroline) Lloyd Withington (later Mrs. George Strobell). Aided by Lloyd's longtime secretary and literary aide, Miss Caroline Stallbohm, Caro approved the editing of five compilations of writings by her brother which were published between 1906 and 1910. She also corresponded with dozens of his friends and associates to gather letters of reminiscence and copies of correspondence not found in Lloyd's own files, and wrote a two-volume biography of her brother issued in 1912.
In December, 1907, Richard T. Ely, director of the American Bureau of Industrial Research, approached Lloyd's son, William Bross Lloyd, to suggest that the University of Wisconsin would be a suitable repository for Lloyd's library. The Lloyd family accepted the offer, and in the following spring the first installment of the collection was sent to the Bureau which had its offices in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. The Lloyd manuscripts in the shipment were given by the Bureau to the Society's manuscripts department, and the books and pamphlets were distributed among appropriate sections of the Society's Library and of the University of Wisconsin Library. Announcement of the collection and its availability to researchers was made in November, 1908. Following the completion of her biography, Caro Lloyd sent her brother's correspondence to Madison, but in 1916 Professor Ely wrote her that in his judgment many personal or private letters should be weeded out and destroyed, a task which he volunteered to perform. To this proposed elimination of personal letters Mrs. Strobell agreed, but with the provision that all rejected letters be returned to her. The extent and content of the material selected by Ely for return is not known.
For nearly twenty years the collection remained in static condition until members of the family were approached concerning the additional manuscripts remaining in their possession. Again their response was favorable. Between 1936 and 1937 Mrs. Strobell and William Bross Lloyd collected and sent additional papers, including copies of magazine articles and book reviews, transcripts of research notes and notebooks, an early draft of Wealth Against Commonwealth, and the correspondence which Caro had received concerning her brother. Several hundred other pieces of correspondence by or to his father or aunt were sent by William Bross Lloyd in 1965. Four years later four of his children, William Bross Lloyd, Jr., Jessie Bross Lloyd, Mary Maverick Lloyd, and Georgia Lloyd, purchased for the Society a portion of one of the revised drafts for Wealth Against Commonwealth. Mrs. William Bross Lloyd greatly enhanced both the quality and size of the collection in 1952 by her donation of many of her father-in-law's original notebooks, drafts of many of his articles and addresses, scattered financial records, and a fine packet of personal letters which he had written to his wife in 1902-1903. The most recent addition, consisting of nine notebooks, was made in 1966, also by Mrs. William Bross Lloyd.
In 1971, the Wisconsin Historical Society, under the sponsorship of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, issued a microfilm publication of the Lloyd Papers.
