Collections : [Bridgeport History Center, Bridgeport Public Library]

The papers of Ethan Ferris Bishop (1825-1883) are primarily letter books that relate to the business and personal life of Ethan Ferris Bishop. Later a minister in the Episcopal Church (ordained 1863), Bishop heavily invested in railroads, as did other men in his family. That investment is reflected heavily in the papers, as is the impact of the Civil War upon commerce and railroads â€" especially those out west along the American frontier.

Very little information is recorded regarding Freida Mellitz Mendelsohn. Research is on-going.

The collection contains letters from Presbyterian missionaries working in China and Korea from 1920 to 1961, with the bulk dating from 1920 through 1941. Most of the correspondence was sent to recipients in the United States by the Fairfield, Connecticut native Elizabeth Curtis Wright, a missionary educated in the Young Women's Christian Association as well as Smith College and Columbia University. She spent most of her career in China. Samuel Austin Moffett and his wife Eileen Moffett also sent letters and reports to Kirk from 1958 through 1961 from their post in Andong, South Korea. The collection provides insight into US missionaries' perceptions of religious practice, schooling, political and military shifts, and poverty in East Asia. Papers also include Kirk's Bridgeport-based diary from 1932 and earlier photographs of her family.

Helen Werner Liskov and her husband Samuel Liskov were ardent participants in Bridgeport politics, cooperative housing and city redevelopment, art collection and donation, and philanthropy over the second half of the twentieth century. The bulk of the collection, consisting primarily of art exhibition and donation documents, co-op administration items, news-clippings, minutes, and newsletters, dates from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Born in Brooklyn in 1840, Henry Alonzo House lived most of his life in Bridgeport, dying in the city on December 17, 1930. A consummate inventor, he filed for patent after patent in diverse industries, and created the earliest known steam powered automobile in 1866. At his death, he had taken out approximately 300 patents for everything from button hole machines to paper cups to shredded wheat, reflecting diversity and ingenuity.

Henry C. Lee was born in Coventry, Connecticut on March 24, 1848. He worked as a part of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company (later Remington Arms), which was originally located in Coventry, then moved to Bridgeport in 1868. He moved with the company and became involved in local and state politics, including serving as Mayor of Bridgeport from 1907-1909. The collection primarily reflects his personal interest in Bridgeport and Connecticut history, but has some mayoral related papers.

Containing Elstein's thesis, "The McLevy Complex: analysis of voting behavior in Bridgeport, CT" and other research papers, this small collection offers insight and research into Bridgeport's socialist mayor six years after his last term in the position.

This collection contains mostly correspondence written from 1894 through 1901 by Henry Sanford, an executive of the mail-shipping firm Adams Express Company and a heavy investor in railroads, other major industries, and banks. His communiques were sent to brokers, purveyors of everyday goods, publications, friends, and relatives. Other documents concern land purchases and leases. They are joined by a small set of photographs.

Herman Steinkraus is best known in Bridgeport for being the long-time president of the Bridgeport Brass Company and one of the founding members of the Barnum Festival. The collection contains the speeches he gave as the president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, photographs of his professional activities and interests, and information about the construction of I-95 in Connecticut.

Dr. Herbert Parker Lansdale III, known as H. Parker Lansdale or simply Parker, was born in Worcester, Maine in1923 and died in 2006 in Milford, Connecticut. From the 1960s into the 1980s, he played an active part in Bridgeport's push for greater access to equity, education, and creating nonprofit social support networks to improve the community. He received a degree from Yale Divinity School after graduating from Oberlin College and eventually ended up working with many of the great social service and education organizations active in Bridgeport, CT, in the 1960s-1980s.