The papers of Franklin MacVeagh (1837-1934) encompass the years 1799-1934, with most of the material after 1880. Approximately half of the collection is concentrated in the period 1909 through March 1913 while MacVeagh was secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of William H. Taft. The collection focuses on the Taft administration, particularly the U.S. Customs Service and U.S. Internal Revenue Service, and also reflects on MacVeagh's roles as husband and father, Chicago businessman, banker, politician, civic reformer, and patron of the arts. The collection has been organized into seven series: Family Papers, General Correspondence, Special Correspondence, Subject File, Business File, Speech and Writings Files, and Miscellany.

The Miscellany series includes news clippings with biographical data on MacVeagh and his wife as well as on other prominent Chicagoans from the 1880s through the 1920s. Also in the Miscellany are pocket memorandum books, address books, and bank books.

Correspondence appears in more than one series, including for MacVeagh's closest lifelong correspondents, his son Eames (Family Papers and Business File), and his business associate and lawyer, Rollin Arthur Keyes (Special Correspondence and Business File). A partial list of major correspondents in the General Correspondence series is appended to this finding aid.

Because the MacVeagh Papers came to the Library in two distinct groups and were processed by different archivists, some discontinuity exists within the collection. The bulk of material from a first purchase was made up of correspondence relating to MacVeagh's Treasury Department years. Although a second purchase also had Treasury Department materials (especially significant was the correspondence with Charles Dyer Norton, assistant secretary of the treasury and later secretary to President Taft), its greatest strength is related to MacVeagh's family, business, and civic endeavors.

The correspondence for 1909-1913 represents selections from the personal files of the secretary of the treasury dealing, in particular, with patronage and general administrative procedures. Much of the correspondence for these years was at one time arranged by MacVeagh in a subject file that contained folders on individuals, organizations, and various general subjects. Files for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, U.S. Public Health Service, and the Tariff Board remain in this series. Files for important individual correspondents have been segregated in a Special Correspondence series. In the latter category are folders for senior government officials such as Charles Francis Adams, Richard Achilles Ballinger, Henry Sherman Boutell, George B. Cortelyou, Shelby M. Cullom, J. M. Dickinson, Walter L. Fisher, John Hay, Frank H. Hitchcock, Philander C. Knox, Charles Nagel, Whitelaw Reid, Henry L. Stimson, William H. Taft, and George W. Wickersham and Treasury Department office heads R. O. Bailey, William S. Broughton, Royal Eubank Cabell, S. M. Gaines, Lee McClung, George Washington Maher, Charles H. Miller, Charles P. Montgomery, Lawrence O. Murray, and Charles Dyer Norton.

MacVeagh's key correspondents within the Family Papers series are his wife, Emily Eames MacVeagh, his son, Eames MacVeagh, and his brother who was himself a one-time cabinet officer, Wayne MacVeagh. Legal and financial papers for MacVeagh and his wife as well as for Mrs. MacVeagh's family are in this series. So, too, are papers dealing with the construction and subsequent remodeling of MacVeagh's H. H. Richardson-designed Chicago mansion and with Knollwood, his summer home in Dublin, New Hampshire. Genealogical material in this series focuses on MacVeagh's third-cousin kinship with Abraham Lincoln.

Certain MacVeagh and Eames family legal matters are discussed in the Special Correspondence series under James J. Barbour and Rollin Arthur Keyes. Dublin-related materials are in the Special Correspondence series under Francis E. Frothingham, Thomas S. Lynch (caretaker at Knollwood), George R. Leighton, and the Pumpelly family.

The MacVeagh Papers also relate to the operation of the wholesale grocery house, Franklin MacVeagh & Company, as found in the Business File series. Although the correspondence spans the years 1872-1928, almost all of it is for the post-1914 period. During this later period MacVeagh retained for himself the final decision for all aspects of his business. Since he remained a resident of Washington, D.C., for more than a decade following his Treasury Department secretaryship, this meant that copies of memoranda and correspondence were customarily sent to him. MacVeagh's directives provide information about the problems encountered and policies adopted by one of the largest wholesale grocery houses in the nation. In this regard the reader will want to consult files in the Special Correspondence series under Henry C. Bannard, Walter T. Chandler, and Rollin Arthur Keyes. Although most of Eames MacVeagh's letters on the wholesale grocery business are in the Business File, a small number are in the Family Papers.

Franklin MacVeagh's career as a banker and investor is less well documented, including papers from the 1880s and 1890s detailing MacVeagh's interest in mining and mercantile operations in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, and the Dakotas.

During the decade prior to his assuming the position as head of the Treasury Department MacVeagh served as president of the Chicago Bureau of Charities and as vice president of the American Civic Association. His activities on behalf of nonpartisan civic affairs can be found under a variety of topics in the Subject File, among them the American Civic Association, the Civic Federation of Chicago, the Immigration Restriction League, the National Civic Federation, and the National Civil Service Reform League. One of the more interesting groups of correspondence is that of the National Civic Federation for which MacVeagh served as member of the executive committee. Another Subject File folder of special note is one labeled “Anthracite coal strike,” which contains a twenty-two page memorandum on the 1902 strike.

Included in the Subject File are folders for the Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Literary Club (of which he was a founding member), the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Municipal Art League of Chicago (of which he was president). Of particular interest in the Special Correspondence series are folders with letters from the Chicago architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham, the American travel author Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, and the Norwegian ethnologist and explorer Carl Lumholtz.

MacVeagh's political interests during his Treasury Department years are well documented in the collection. So, too, are MacVeagh's political affairs in 1896 and 1897 when free silver was the leading issue of the day. The Leonard Wood folder in the Special Correspondence series is of importance regarding MacVeagh's choice for the 1920 Republican Party presidential nomination.