Background
William Lawrence Clements was born on April 1, 1861 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. He was the son of James and Agnes (Macready) Clements.
(Excerpt from The William L. Clements Library of Americana...)
Excerpt from The William L. Clements Library of Americana at the University of Michigan These sales were fruitful sources of growth for this Library, both through direct bids or afterwards through dealers. The suppressed offerings of many previous years, at auction and private sales, were concentrated into the period of the war. The Jones, Herman Edgar, Wallace, Benedict, and other less important collections, were sold, and some of their Americana is now on the shelves of this Library. The famous White or Nugget Sale also furnished some very rare books. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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William Lawrence Clements was born on April 1, 1861 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. He was the son of James and Agnes (Macready) Clements.
Educated in the local schools and at the University of Michigan (B. S. , 1882), he early displayed a deep interest in American history, and particularly in books relating thereto. As a boy he knew and was influenced by two of the principal teachers of the University, Thomas McIntyre Cooley and Moses Coit Tyler. Although he prepared for a career in engineering, his college record shows that he took all the courses he could in literature and history.
On graduation from college, he accepted a position with the Industrial Works of Bay City, Michigan, founded by his father, which he served as president from 1896 to his retirement in 1924. This firm, later known as Industrial Brownhoist Corporation, specialized in the manufacture of railway equipment, developing a widely used type of heavy crane. Clements played a large part in the early engineering of these rather remarkable machines and later under his leadership and with the engineering ability of one of his partners, Ernest Blackman Perry, these cranes were brought to a high efficiency in the Bay City plant. Shortly after moving to Bay City, Clements became a warm friend of Aaron J. Cooke, a local merchant who was later the city librarian. Cooke also had a passion for American history and was a collector of early and rare books in the field. In 1905 Clements bought Cooke's library and started seriously the collecting of rare Americana, which, beginning as a hobby many years earlier, ultimately became the principal interest of his life. The first two decades of the twentieth century afforded great opportunity for the American collector, particularly when the First World War brought many choice items to America. Toward the end of the war, the problem of the ultimate disposition of the results of his book-collecting efforts began to concern Clements. During this time there had been growing a warm friendship with Claude H. Van Tyne, who headed the department of history at the University of Michigan, and whose interest in American colonial and Revolutionary history fitted exactly into the field in which Clements was collecting books. In the building of a library, friendship counts for much, and among those who aided Clements must also be reckoned George Parker Winship, Worthington C. Ford, and several distinguished antiquarian booksellers, prominent among whom were Lathrop C. Harper of New York and Henry N. Stevens of London. Stevens's father had been largely instrumental in helping build similar libraries for John Carter Brown of Providence, and James Lenox of New York. The gift of these libraries to public institutions provided a precedent which, to a certain extent, led Clements to present his collection to the University of Michigan in 1922-23. He also erected a separate building to house it. The year after making this gift to the University (1924), Clements retired from active business, though he retained the presidency of the First National Bank of Bay City. He then devoted himself actively to studying, and to further collecting in the field of American history. He never missed a meeting of the committee of management of the Clements Library at Ann Arbor, for no meeting was held unless he could be present. Up to the time of the actual establishment of his library at Ann Arbor in the early summer of 1923, Clements had devoted himself very largely to the collection of printed books relating to American history in the period before 1800. He had, however, occasionally purchased small lots of rare early maps and manuscripts. With the transfer of his library to the University, a new phase in his collecting began. Under the influence of Van Tyne and Ford, he began to see the possibilities of collecting unpublished historical manuscripts, and his own inclination, as well as the enthusiasm of Van Tyne, focussed his attention upon the American Revolution. Since the American manuscripts of that epoch had been pretty well garnered by Eastern repositories, Clements took advantage of successive opportunities to acquire directly from the descendants of the original participants, the papers of certain leaders on the British side. In succession he purchased the papers of the second Earl of Shelburne (leader of Whig opposition to ministerial policy and prime minister during the peace negotiations of 1782); of Sir Henry Clinton (British commander-in-chief in North America, 1778-82), of Lord George Germain (secretary of state for the colonies), and of Gen. Thomas Gage (in command of the British army in America when the Revolution broke out). These collections were acquired with the express purpose of presenting them to the University, for as Clements often said, "Why else should I buy them at all?" In 1908 Clements had been elected a regent of the University of Michigan, and he remained in that position for twenty-four years by successive reelection of the people of Michigan. His practical experience as an engineer and business man brought about his appointment as chairman of the regents' committee on buildings and grounds, and his other major interest, the love of books, found expression in his work for the university libraries. His service as regent fell in the period during which, through state appropriations and private gift, the University was enabled to erect in one decade a greater number of buildings than ever before in its history. A large share of the responsibility for securing plans and expending the millions of dollars that were involved in what amounted to the rebuilding of the University, fell to Clements. The extent of his charity and kindness to others can never be known, but it was marked and considerable. Like other successful American business men of his period, he was essentially a builder, with somewhat of the soul of an artist. Like so many Americans of his generation, book-collecting was no fun to him unless he was able to share his pleasures with others, and the gift of his collection to the principal educational institution of his state is the supreme evidence of this. His fortune was considerably affected by the business depression that began in 1929, but with all the losses he suffered his carefully laid plans materialized and the manuscripts and books acquired after the transfer of his library in 1923, became a part of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. While vacationing in Florida in the winter of 1934, he suffered a heart attack and died at Bay City in the autumn of the same year. He is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Ann Arbor.
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(Excerpt from The William L. Clements Library of Americana...)
In character, Clements was a born connoisseur, whose good taste was apparent in whatever he touched.
Clements was married, first, on February 7, 1887, to Jessie N. Young, of Pittsburgh. They had three children: William Wallace, James Renville, and Eliza Moody. His second wife was F. Katharine Fisher of Bay City, to whom he was married on April 22, 1931.