Scope and Content Note
The papers of Carl Schurz Vrooman (1872-1966) span the years 1872-1975, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1890-l975. The collection consists of diaries, correspondence, speeches and writings, and other papers of family members, including Vrooman; his wife, Julia Scott Vrooman (1876-1961); mother-in-law Julia Green Scott (1839-1923), president-general of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution; and several of Carl Vrooman’s brothers, Frank, Hiram, and Walter Vrooman.
Among the topics of importance are agriculture and agricultural policy, especially during Vrooman’s tenure as assistant secretary of agriculture in the Woodrow Wilson administration, social life in Washington in the early twentieth century, and Vrooman’s interest in religion and spirituality. Special correspondents of Carl Vrooman include Louis Dembitz Brandeis, William Jennings Bryan, Paul H. Douglas, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, Edward Mandell House, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Special correspondents of Julia Scott Vrooman include Mary Baird Bryan, Vachel Lindsay, Eleanor Roosevelt, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, and Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965), Mrs. Vrooman’s cousin.
Also in the collection are files devoted to Carl Bickel and the Farmers’ Political Conference of Illinois. Other files relate to the poet Vachel Lindsay; the founding of Ruskin Hall, Oxford; a deposition of Carl Vrooman in a case concerning the Scott-Lees Collegiate Institute; and materials concerning the “Wisconsin matter” of 1917 in which Vrooman questioned the wartime loyalty and leadership of the University of Wisconsin.