Scope and Content Note
The papers of Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941), born John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum, span the years 1881-2019, with the bulk concentrated in the period 1912-1941. Consisting of diaries, general and family correspondence, financial matter, subject files, and other personal material, the papers include two additions containing records of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission transferred from the National Park Service at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, as well as family papers of Gutzon Borglum's second wife, Mary Montgomery Borglum, and son, Lincoln Borglum. The collection documents Borglum's artistic career as well as activities in such diverse fields as politics in the Republican and Progressive parties, as a member of several aeronautical societies and as a freemason, civic affairs including highway planning, and Native American affairs pertaining primarily to the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, and is organized into nine series: Diaries, Family Papers, General Correspondence, Subject File, Speeches and Articles, Miscellany, Addition, 2021 Addition, and Oversize.
The most extensive files concern Borglum's most ambitious and best-known projects, an uncompleted memorial to the Confederacy at Stone Mountain, Georgia, and the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore. There is also a great deal of correspondence and related papers concerning the investigation of the aircraft manufacturing industry in 1918 that Borglum had instigated.
The papers also contain a group of correspondence exchanged by various members of Borglum's family, Borglum's financial papers, and a number of his speeches and articles. Prominent among the correspondents are Henry Harley Arnold, Newton Diehl Baker, Calvin Coolidge, Josephus Daniels, Daniel Chester French, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Harold L. Ickes, Robert Todd Lincoln, Auguste Rodin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Jacob H. Schiff, George Bernard Shaw, William Allen White, Woodrow Wilson, and Frank Lloyd Wright. A small part of his correspondence, including letters from presidents and other notables, is also available on microfilm.
The Addition series, 1920-1941, is comprised of the records of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission. Dated chiefly from 1930 to 1940, the records contain the correspondence of Borglum as sculptor and director of the project; his son, Lincoln Borglum, superintendent; John A. Boland, commission secretary; and others. Also included are telegrams, speeches, newspaper clippings, contracts, blueprints, audit reports, annual reports, treasurer's reports, brochures, charts, printed matter, and miscellaneous material. The records are concerned with the commission's funding, promotion and publicity of the project, project expenditures, the appointment of commissioners, and the placement of the commission under the Department of the Interior. Among the correspondents are George W. Norris, Key Pittman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Julius Rosenwald, Fred Sargent, and William Williamson.
The 2021 Addition, 1881-2019, consists of correspondence, subject files, material relating to Gutzon Borglum's artworks and projects, articles, essays, and other writings by and about him. It also contains family papers primarily relating to Lincoln Borglum and Mary Montgomery Borglum, comprised of correspondence, diaries, subject files, writings and manuscripts, press clippings, and material relating to Lincoln Borglum's artworks, projects, and business ventures. Mary Montgomery Borglum's papers include manuscript drafts of her autobiography, detailing her life and her husband's career. Correspondence throughout the 2021 Addition is arranged by the primary sender or recipient; letters to and from Gutzon, Mary, and Lincoln, however, are frequently interfiled with one another throughout the correspondence. Among the correspondents are members of the Roosevelt family, including Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln.