Search

The William Livingston Jr. Topical Files document many of the business and personal activities of Livingstone's life. Of particular interest is the Speech Book, which gives clear indication of both Livingstone's speaking style and his political views, and the Family Biography file, which provides genealogical information about William Livingstone and Susan Ralston Downie Livingstone as well as anecdotes about their lives. The Diaries and Account Books primarily contain routine information about Livingstone's shipping and trading (such as wind direction and business transactions), but a few more personal entries are scattered throughout the journals. There is also in this series a volume (1925) kept by an unnamed person close to Livingstone in which is recorded business and travel dates of Livingstone's final months of life as well as a note about his death.

This series consists mainly of letters sent to Marion Scherer from family and friends. The letters relate to family activities, many of a social nature. Marion Scherer married Seabourn Livingston, October 23, 1920.

The Visual Materials series is the highlight of the Livingstone collection. The Photographs subseries documents Livingstone himself from his days as a young man to the final year of his life. Numerous portrait shots of Livingstone, his wife Susan, and their parents and children tell the story of an affluent Detroit family from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age. Photographs of their homes and vacations (to Venice and Miami) round out the pictorial history.

Researchers searching for information on Great Lakes shipping will be interested in photographs that recount the construction and launch of the freighter William Livingstone and capture other moments of note on the Detroit River and Great Lakes.

Also of note is an aerial photograph of downtown Detroit taken around 1920. There are also photos of the opening of the Livingstone Channel on the Detroit River in 1912, a photo of the Dime Saving Bank in Detroit (1925), and photos of Livingstone with Henry Ford and William Howard Taft.