Series 8 - Irish emigrant letters to Richard R. Elliott, Detroit

42pp and 1 microfilm

Kerby A. Miller was given a microfilm reel containing copies of Richard R. Elliott's letterbooks by the Detroit Public Library. Miller created his transcripts of the Elliott letters from this reel, which is located with Miller's materials on Elliott at University of Galway Archives and Special Collections [reference number P155/59/8]. The original manuscripts and microfilm reels are held in the Richard R. Elliott papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library [call number MS/Elliott. Richard R./L5].

Materials pertaining to letters written by Irish American emigrants to Richard R. Elliott (1823-1908), chairman of the Young Men’s Benevolent Society, Detroit, seeking his assistance. Elliott’s father had himself come from County Tipperary to Quebec in 1819. The Elliott family came to Rochester, New York in 1827 and then to Detroit in 1833.
Per the Detroit Public Library: ‘Elliott was a native of Quebec, practically all of whose life was spent in Detroit. Here he became prominent in business, engaged in various civic activities, and devoted much of his energy to writing on religious and local historical themes. He was Irish and a Catholic and these facts influenced materially both his social and his literary activities. His father was one of the creators of Mount Elliott Cemetery and the first person buried therein, and the son was long active in promoting the Cemetery's welfare and development. In early manhood he engaged in the business of inducing emigrants to come to Michigan, and numerous volumes of the papers consist of original letters and other records of this immigration which his biographer states was responsible for bringing over 11,000 people to Michigan.’
The series includes: Kerby A. Miller’s typed abstracts of the letters; Miller’s transcript of the John Francis letter to Elliott of 4 June 1854; photocopies of John May’s letter of 9 December 1857; biographical notes on Elliott; a copy of O'Brien, D. (1909). ‘Memoir of the Late Honorable Richard Robert Elliott, Historiographer of the City of Detroit, Born 1823—Died 1908’, Michigan Historical and Pioneer Collections 37, pp. 644-661; and a microfilm from the Detroit Public Library containing the Elliott letters.