M. D. Ball papers

The papers consist primarily of scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings, manuscript notes, and Congressional bills regarding Alaska, but also include correspondence, customs documents, writings, maps, and a few photographs and printed illustrations. They document Ball's work as Customs Collector in Sitka at a time when that office was the chief representative of the U. S. Government in Alaska; his term as Alaska's first delegate to Congress, 1882-1885, and his campaign for representation and governance for the Territory; and other events in Alaskan history to 1887.

Series I,Correspondence , includes letters to Ball from Benjamin Harrison, William Dall, M. P. Deady, E. P. Lull, Marcus Baker of the USGS, and John H. Mitchell, as well as from the Pacific Steamship Company regarding his writing for their pamphlet "All About Alaska." Also present are letters to Ball's daughter from James Wickersham.

Series II,Papers , is organized in two subseries, Documents and Writings. Documents include customs receipts from 1877 to 1879, petitions for Ball's election as delegate to Congress, printed bills and statements by Ball to Congress, a subscription for the 1880 4th of July celebration in Sitka, and a report on mining in Cook's Inlet in 1898 by B. Frank Hand. Writings consists of two draft chapters from a larger work about Alaska culture and history, a prospectus about travel in Alaska written for tourists, and a draft article about mining.

Series III,Scrapbooks , consists of two bound scrapbooks and two loose pages from a third volume. The scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings, manuscript notes, congressional bills, and printed maps. The first volume, in Folder 21, largely concerns the events of the winter of 1878-1879, when U. S. citizens in Sitka appealed to a British warship for protection from native tribes, and the ensuing controversy.

Series IV,Visual Material , consists of a 1927 Blueprint for the Alaska flag, several printed and manuscript maps of Alaska, a manuscript map showing military operations of the Crimean war, two photographs of St. Peter's by the SEa, a church in Sitka, and two lithographs removed from a Russian book, one of them showing the Sitka harbor.