Benecke Family Papers, 1816-1989, n.d. (C3825)

Over ten decades of business practices are covered in the Business Records series. Records of the Brunswick Brick and Tile Company, Brunswick companies and dealerships, Benecke Insurance and Real Estate Agencies, the Elliott Grove Cemetery Association, and Chariton County cemetery records are in this series.

Records of Brunswick, Missouri, companies, businesses, dealerships; Elliott Grove Cemetery Association; 1st National Bank, Brunswick; insurance agencies. Real estate records of Louis and Ruby W. Benecke including rental accounts.
SEE: Chariton County and City of Brunswick series for records of Brunswick Light and Water Company (f. 495).

Official city and county records; church records; and records of civic, social and fraternal clubs, and secret societies; public schools; and Brunswick postmasters comprise the Chariton County and City of Brunswick Records series.

The Louis Benecke Papers, consisting of Benecke's correspondence, legislative and political papers, personal papers, and subject files are the bulk of the collection. Notable correspondents include Carl Schurz, Missouri governors, politicians, government and railroad officials, editors, foreign consuls, and veterans.

The correspondence includes claims and business, legal, personal, and family correspondence. There are letters to Benecke as agent for collecting and adjusting claims against the government for back pay, bounty, pensions, and other war claims; U.S. law suits v. Benecke and others. Personal letters deal with Brunswick matters, law cases, land sales, farm land rentals and crops, securing land titles, legislation and politics, railroads; accounts with booksellers, merchants, and druggists. Family correspondence includes letters in German from his brother, Robert, a St. Louis photographer, and Louis's wife Josephine, and follows each year's business and personal correspondence. Letters from his children chronicle their student and college days, businesses, and family lives. His subject files include Missouri River lands and navigation, Cut-Off Hunting and Fishing Club, Germans, Grand River Bridge, patents, and temperance and prohibition of the 1880s and 1890s.

The Military Papers series includes Civil War documents, diaries, and papers; regimental histories of the 18th and 49th Missouri Infantry Volunteers; Louis Benecke's manuscripts, book, and articles, war claims and pension agent files, records as Department Commander of the G.A.R., officer of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion and other veterans' organizations; and records of the Federal Soldiers Home, St. James.

There are excellent descriptions of battles, military life, medical care, health concerns, and correspondence on legislation of concern to veterans. A black claims section and descriptive list of black soldiers offer an overview of the black military experience and black social history.

Three generations of attorneys are represented in the Law Firm Records series, which includes case and client files, circuit and probate court records, land records, and European collections.

The Ruby W. Benecke Papers comprise approximately 15.6 linear feet of the Benecke Family Papers. They include his correspondence, records and case files as U.S. Commissioner, Eastern District of Missouri, Northern Division, and U.S. Conciliation Commissioner; Bar Associations material including correspondence, minutes, treasurer's reports, financial records; Constitutional Convention papers; Constitutional Convention Association papers; personal papers including personal and family correspondence, financial records, insurance and land records; political papers including correspondence, poll books and voter lists, campaign literature, and ephemera.

Papers of Ruby Benecke also appear throughout other sections of the collection including the business records section, law firm records section, and miscellaneous family papers and photographs sections. Descriptions of his school and college days in St. Louis appear in letters to his family in the family correspondence sections of his father's papers.

A Family Papers and miscellany series includes Benecke genealogical items; women's correspondence, written in German, 1858-1924; school items; Young Men's Christian Association papers; and papers of Otto K. (Ruby's brother) and Louis Waldo (son of Ruby) Benecke.

Volumes are arranged by series, which correspond to the series arrangement of the folders. Loose items pertaining to entries and previously located within the volumes are in folders following each volume.