Fred Hartenstein Collection of Autographs
The autograph collection was donated by WMU management professor, Fred Hartenstein
in 1983. Dr. Hartenstein saved this collection as a student, while in charge
of Pages of the Library, at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He was given this collection by the Carnegie Library, after inquiring when he
found out that it was going to be discarded after years of storage.
Ms. Sophie Levin, a Reference Librarian at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, originally gathered the autographs between 1900 and 1910. She was
able to gather as many autographs as she did by sending requests to famous people
for their autographs.
The autographs sometimes include quotations such as the
Jack London autograph with a quote from Call of the Wild and John Phillip
Sousa's autograph with a few bars from a march entitled The Fairest of the
Fair . Some of the autographs in the collection, such as the Booker T. Washington
autograph, are accompanied by a letter addressed to Ms. Levin.
The collection contains over 80 autographs of famous people from the first
few decades of the twentieth century. This collection includes autographs of
political figures, writers, inventors, and entrepreneurs.
Some of the American
political signatures include former Presidents such as: Woodrow Wilson, Theodore
Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft. Other celebrities who granted Ms. Levin's
request include: Booker T. Washington, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, and William
Jennings Bryan.
In addition to the autographs, the collection also contains the typed letters
of denials from the people from whom Ms. Levin had requested the autographs.
Finding Aid: Fred Hartenstein Autograph Collection
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