J. S. Holliday research collection on the William Swain family

The J. S. Holliday Research Collection on the William Swain Family consists of papers relating to the Swain family, which Holliday gathered in the course of his research for The World Rushed In. The collection is housed in eight boxes and is organized into two series: Swain Family Papers and J. S. Holliday Research Files.

Series I, Swain Family Papers , 1862-1980, boxes 1-3, is organized into five subseries: Correspondence, Writings, Documents and Financial Papers, Other Papers, and Photographs. The correspondence includes 27 letters to forty-niner William Swain from his wife Sabrina and brother George, dated April 15, 1849 to September 8, 1850. Also included are "A Forty Niner," William's dictated recollections, and his will, made out before leaving for California. Other family papers include William's father Isaac's account books, letters of family members and neighbors, including a draft of a letter to William's half-sister Rebecca Swain Williams in 1839 announcing the death of Isaac and the family's reaction to Rebecca's conversion to Mormonism, and a daguerreotype and cased albumen prints, presumably of family members.

Series II, J. S. Holliday Research Files , 1862-1980, boxes 4-8, is organized into four subseries: Correspondence, Writings, Printed Material, and Other Papers. The files include approximately 150 letters from Sara Swain to Holliday and another 70 to her Mormon cousin Nancy Williams, with much information on the history of the Swain family and Niagara County, New York. These are accompanied by Holliday's notes, transcripts of the Swain letters, photocopies of materials related to the Wolverine Rangers, Sara Swain's notes on family and local history, and After 100 Years, Nancy Williams' biography of Rebecca and Frederick Granger Williams.