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AFL Secretary-Treasurer's Office, Gabriel Edmonston papers

 Collection 0010-LBR-RG2-001

Gabriel Edmonston was the General President of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of American from 1881-1882, a member of the FOTLU Legislative Committee from 1882-1886, and Treasurer of the AFL from 1886-1888. The collection contains about 250 items, primarily correspondence but also flyers, circulars and pamphlets. Correspondence from Peter J. McGuire and Samuel Gompers is included.

Dates

  • 1881-1912

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open to the public and must be used in the Special Collections reading room. Researchers must register and agree to copyright and privacy laws before using this collection.

Conditions Governing Use

Photocopies or digital surrogates may be provided in accordance with Special Collections and University Archives duplication policy.

Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs unless otherwise specified. It is the researcher's responsibility to secure permission to publish materials from the appropriate copyright holder.

Archival materials may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal and/or state right to privacy laws or other regulations. While we make a good faith effort to identify and remove such materials, some may be missed during our processing. If a researcher finds sensitive personal information in a collection, please bring it to the attention of the reading room staff.

Extent

0.5 Linear Feet

Scope and Content of the Collection

Gabriel Edmonston was the General President of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of American from 1881-1882, a member of the FOTLU Legislative Committee from 1882-1886, and Treasurer of the AFL from 1886-1888. The collection contains about 250 items, primarily correspondence but also flyers, circulars and pamphlets. The letters dating from the early 1880's are mainly from Peter J. McGuire, General Secretary of the Carpenters from 1881 to 1901 and an officer of the AFL from 1886 to 1900. Concerned principally with the struggle to establish the carpenters' union and a national federation of trade unions, the letters from this period deal with local carpenters' disputes, the activities of the Knights of Labor, and McGuire's evaluations of Samuel Gompers' first years as AFL President. The letters dating from the late 1880's and 1890's are primarily from Gompers, and focus on Edmonston's roles as Treasurer of the AFL, lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and leader in the labor movement in the capital; also included is personal correspondence relating to Gompers' family. The few twentieth-century documents in the collection consist of personal items and material related to the carpenters' union.

Custodial History

These records were received by the George Meany Memorial Archives sometime before 1984. The George Meany Memorial Archives transferred these records as part of a major transfer of their archive and library holdings to the University of Maryland Libraries in 2013.

Related Materials

This collection has been microfilmed and appears on Reel 1 of: Albert, Peter J., and Harold L. Miller. The American Federation of Labor Records: The Samuel Gompers Era, Guide to a Joint Microfilm Edition. Madison, Wisconsin: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1981, p. 7-8.

Processing Information

Archives staff at the George Meany Memorial Archives initially processed these records in 1984. The University of Maryland Libraries received the records and the finding aid in 2013. In 2017, Bria Parker exported and cleaned the finding aid contents from the Eloquent Systems database using OpenRefine, and finally transformed the finding aids into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) using a series of programmatic scripts. The finding aid was ingested into ArchivesSpace in 2017, at which point Jennifer Eidson updated the descriptive content for accuracy. Revisions include changes to biographical/historical notes, scope and content notes, and the creation of new collection numbers. Jennifer Eidson also enhanced custodial histories and re-wrote collection titles to better conform to archival standards.

Title
Guide to the AFL Secretary-Treasurer's Office, Gabriel Edmonston papers
Status
Completed
Author
George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archives
Date
1984-07
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Library Details

Part of the Special Collections and University Archives

Contact:
University of Maryland Libraries
Hornbake Library
4130 Campus Drive
College Park Maryland 20742
301-405-9212