Ralph Middleton Munroe (1851-1933) settled in Florida in 1891, drawn by its lush tropical landscapes and beautiful seashores. An avid yachtsman and photographer, the Commodore traveled the South Florida coast capturing images of its pristine wilderness and the early inhabitants. Munroe’s photographs provide a unique visual record of South Florida history before its rapid urbanization. The Ralph M. Munroe Family Papers contain a rich assortment of photographs, albums, postcards, correspondence, clippings and manuscripts that document the frontier life in Coconut Grove.
The contents of the most recent donation in spring of 2025 (Boxes 73-76) can be found in the attached pdf document.
This collection consists of around 1000 letters, pamphlets, and documents pertaining to 1950's conservative activism. Garfield and Welti lived in South Florida and corresponded via letter, newspaper clippings, and self-produced pamphlets to conservative extremists around the country. The collection reflects anti-Communist, anti-African American, anti-mental health, and antisemitic sentiment and activism.
The combination of personal letters, newsletters, newspaper clippings and magazine articles in the collection presents an incredibly well-rounded representation of the day to day lives the Americans who resisted the Civil Rights Movement and lived in fear of Communism and the U.S.S.R. The many newsletters and political tracts within the collection are invaluable research materials, while the personal letters create an intimate, nuanced picture of the lives of the writers in 1950s America.
A collection of play books that originate from the United States, Great Britain, and France. Most of the plays are in English, but a few are in French.
The collection documents the civic and social activities of the Woman's Club of Coconut Grove - formerly called the Housekeepers' Club. The records include minutes, committee and financial reports as well as membership files, scrapbooks, narratives, publications, photographs and architectural plans. The topical files contain information about the history and development of Coconut Grove depicted with maps, event flyers, local organization by-laws, newspaper clippings and local publications.
Note : includes maps of Albany (New York), Biscayne Bay, Cape Cod, Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, City of Miami, Dade County, Dinner Key, Green Island/West Troy, and Islandia.
Note : includes maps by the Biscayne Bay Conservation Association, Inc. opposing construction of "islands or solid fill...in the Safety Valve between Cape Florida (Key Biscayne) and the Keys."
Note : includes documents relating the the Florida-Patsand Corp. plan for an Ocean Scenic Parkway across lower Biscayne Bay and counter arguments by the Marine Council of the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce.
Note : includes documents on the first 30 years of Miami and a typescript "Objections to the Helm Plan for islands off Coconut Grove by owners of adjacent lands and other citizens interested."
Series 5 includes typescripts of Ralph Munroe's memoir, The Commodore's Story, which he co-authored with his friend Vincent Gilpin. The book was published in 1930.
The Bay View House, later known as the Peacock Inn, was the earliest hotel in the Bay area as of 1882. The inn was owned by English settlers, Charles and Isabella Peacock who maitained it until 1902. Ralph Munroe was a frequent winter visitor and friend of the family. The Peacock Inn became a gathering place for a faithfull group of Nothern visitors. The Commodore opened Camp Biscayne after the inn closed (due to Mr. & Mrs. Peacocks ill health) to provide new accomodations for those who still wished to vacation to South Florida. The series includes photographs of the various cottages as well as the native plants and trees of hammocks. The promotional materials include flyers and brochures describing the Biscayne Bay area, the favorable climate and the its suitability for boating and fishing.
The diaries, calendars and logs record the individual perspectives of members of the Munroe family during their travels and as they settle in the local Staten Island and Coconut Grove communities. For instance, Ellen Middleton and Thomas Munroe (Ralph M. Munroe's parents) were married on July 4, 1839 in London. According to Ralph M. Munroe, his mother's diaries describe the travels and adventures of the couple between America and London during his father's various business activities. The series also includes the diaries of Jessie Wirth Munroe, the Commodores' second wife as well as the notebooks of Mary Poore Munroe (married to Wirth Munroe, Jessie and Ralph Munroe's son).
In 1894, Ralph Munroe met his second wife Miss Jessie Wirth during a sailing trip with his friends Mr. and Mrs. Benton (Jessie Wirth was Mrs. Benton's younger sister). Ralph Munroe and Jessie Wirth were married in July 1895. The couple had two children, Patty born in 1900 and Wirth in 1902. Series II documents the correspondence of the Munroe and Wirth Families (Arranged Chronologically).
The Charles Creighton Collection contains an illuminated manuscript on parchment, signed by Charles VI, last of the house of Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia and Hungary-Croatia. It was the property of Prince Max of Baden until the end of the first World War.
The 33-page manuscript measures 8 by 11 inches, with illuminated borders in red, blue, and gold, and an artistically designed title in black and gold of royal insignia surrounded by implements of war and the crown of the king. The manuscript is bound in a gilded hand-embroidered binding of decorative design with ornamental ribbon ties and tinsel fringes. It is attached with a gold braided cord is the Royal Seal of Charles VI, measuring 4 1/4 inches in diameter with the inscription "Carolus VI Romanorum Imperator S. A. Hispaniarum et utriusque Siciliae Rex." The seal is enclosed in a decorated silver case which is intended to rest in a circular compartment in the center of a tooled Viennese leather binding in which the manuscript reposes. The manuscript is written entirely in Latin and confers the title of Marquis on Honuphrium Ianno Ernandes Arias for "Militiaque multa suae Fides, Constantia Sapienta, ac Fortitudinis Specima edidissent..." (translation: In long military service he displayed Faith, Constancy, Prudence, and Courage...) To legalize the document, it is signed in the autograph of King Charles VI "Yo el Rey," below which are the signatures of noblemen and dignitaries of state.
Included also are 15 separate pages of manuscript written in Latin. These pages also refer to the Marquis and are dated in May of 1731. An unsigned manuscript by one of the Ianno family consists of 5 lines and is written in French.
The Charles Creighton Collection also contains high quality facsimiles of several historical predominantly French documents from the 17th and 18th century. These are: a letter pleading for a 3 day postponement of Louis XIV's execution by Louis XIV dated January 20, 1793; two letters informing French generals of the Waterloo victory by the Duke of Wellington, dated June 14 and June 20, 1815; Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson's unfinished letter to Lady Hamilton, dated October 19, 1805; Napoleon's appeal to England for protection after his defeat at Waterloo, dated July 13, 1815; a note written by Marie Antoinette written just before her execution in 1793; and the last letter written by Robespierre, unfinished due to his being shot, with bloodstains at the bottom of the letter, dated July 27, 1794.
Series I depicts 19th century "views" of Southern Florida and Staten Island. The photographs are visual documents of South Florida flora and fauna, native Seminole Indians, Bahamian settlers as well as the early European residents of Coconut Grove. Images of the first pioneering families such as the Peacocks, Frows, Carneys and Sanders are featured in these early traces of Florida history. The Munroe family homestead, the Barnacle, now an historic state park, is extensively featured in boxes 1 and 2. Finally, the photographs also depict the many yachts designed by Ralph Munroe, the founder of the Biscayne Bay Yacht Club. (Arranged according to Mr. Munroe's groupings and titles).
Partially handwritten, partially typewritten, hand colored illustrated manuscript. Contains 24 watercolor illustrations. The manuscript contains two epistolary short stories written by Kate Whiting Patch. Both stories "A Garden Idyl" and "The Blue Bird's Return" were originally published in Harper's Magazine. Illustrator is unknown.
The Latin American and Caribbean photograph collection brings together various photographic materials owned by the University of Miami that depict these two regions. Currently, the collection holds a 1929 photograph album of the Bahamas made by Dr. and Adelande Dolley; a 1913 photograph album of Costa Rica, Panama, and Jamaica; a two-volume photograph album set of the Roxana Petroleum Corporation's activities in Mexico, dated 1920-1923; a set of 88 photographs of various parts of the Dominican Republic; and a collection of 739 photographs (most of which are in two photograph albums) from 1925 to the 1940s documenting the family and social life of Mr. & Mrs. E. W. Monroe and their three children while living in suburban Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1925 to 1929, and subsequently back at the family homestead in Monticello, Indiana.
"A very rare set of a dozen lithograph views of Martinique after eleven photographs by Hippolyte Hartmann and one drawing by Michel-Jean Cazabon, set on stone by Eugène Cicéri in Paris circa 1860. The Alsatian Hartmann and his son worked as photographers in the Caribbean and on the Atlantic coast of South America, 'As was necessary, since in the mid-nineteenth century the residents of any one island could not support a full time photographer' - Getty. They seem to have travelled often with Cazabon, a Creole artist regarded as the first great Trinidadian painter, with whom they also published a second lithograph view book depicting Demerara." -- Librería de Antaño
