The Clements Library, founded by Michigan industrialist William L. Clements, a regent and alumnus of the University of Michigan, was opened in 1923 with the gift of Clements' extraordinary Americana collection -- 20,000 volumes of rare books, 2,000 volumes of early newspapers, several hundred maps, and the papers of Lord Shelburne, the British Prime Minister who negotiated the peace ending the Revolutionary War.
Clements modeled his library after the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, R.I. In his gift agreement with the University, Clements stipulated that his library would be dedicated to collecting and preserving primary sources for early American history; that it would be independent from the University's library system, and that it would be available only to advanced scholars. The Library was to be governed by a board of trustees selected by the Regents and chaired by the University President. In return, the University agreed to provide financial support for staff salaries, building maintenance, and a sum for acquisitions. Detroit architect, Albert Kahn (1869-1942) designed the elegant neo-classical building, constructed at a cost of $200,000.
Director 
Randolph G. Adams, who served between 1923 and 1951, began to expand Clements' original collections relating to the European discovery, exploration, and colonization of America and the American Revolution. Between 1924 and 1930, Clements made a series of purchases that created the largest collection of manuscripts in the United States documenting the British side of the American Revolution -- including the papers of British Generals Thomas Gage, Sir Henry Clinton, Cabinet Minister George Germain, and the letters of the Freiherr von Jungkenn, commanding Hessian forces serving with the British army in North America. Clements intended to give these manuscripts to the Library, but suffered heavy losses during the Depression. Upon his death in 1934, his heirs agreed to sell the British collections to the Library. With the help of Detroit philanthropist, Tracy McGregor, they were purchased by installments over the next fourteen years.
Adams organized the Library into three Divisions -- Books, Manuscripts, and Maps. Although funds were limited in the 1930s and 40s, he made important acquisitions, including the papers of General Josiah Harmar. Two acquitisions made possible by the assistance of Prof. Dwight Dumond laid the foundation for the Library's collection of 19th century social and intellectual history -- the papers of anti-slavery activists James Gillespie Birney and Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké. Adams was a persuasive speaker and writer, energetically publicizing the new library in the academic world. At his untimely death in 1951, Adams had succeeded in developing Clements' private collection into a research library with an international reputation.
In 1953, Howard H. Peckham, historian of early America, became the Library's second Director. Having been manuscript curator from 1935 to 1945, Peckham was thoroughly familiar with the Library's collections and made important additions for the early national and antebellum periods. He added over 2,300 books printed before 1800, and developed new collecting interests -- early American music, architecture, literature, and the history of indigenous religious movements. When Peckham retired in 1977, he had transformed the Clements from an exclusive library for bibliophiles and expert historians, to an active center for historical research at all levels.
Like his predecessor, current Director, John C. Dann, was a former manuscript curator who assumed the Directorship with a broad knowledge of the Library's collections already in hand. While continuing to build on areas of traditional collecting strength, Dann has been particularly responsive to developing the Library's collections in social history, substantially broadening the 19th century collections with a focus on the lives of average Americans. Rapid growth in the Library's collections of photographs, graphic material, sheet music, and ephemera, and the collections of books, pamphlets, broadsides, magazines, and county atlases has also contributed significantly to the Library's ability to support research projects in American popular culture.
Over the past 20 years, Dann has added over 25,000 individual titles to the Book Division alone (about one third of the Library's total holdings), has more than doubled the size of the manuscripts collections, increased maps by 15%, and acquired the majority of items that comprise the Print Divisions and the entirety of the Photographs Division. Under his direction, the Civil War has emerged as a major collecting focus. In the early 1970s, Dann encouraged New York businessman James S. Schoff to donate his Civil War manuscripts, regimental histories, and photographs to the Clements, and today, the Schoff Civil War collections are one of our nation's great resources for original research in the Civil War. In the past decade, the Clements has also increased its role as an active participant in teaching and research at the the University of Michigan.
