The Paul Bunyan Collection of the Children's Literature Research Collections, at the University of Minnesota, was established in 1960 with the gift of an extensive group of books, pamphlets, photographs, etc., the result of many years' active collecting by the late Professor W. W. Charters of Ohio State University. Since then gifts from a variety of friends and purchases by the library have produced a sizeable assemblage of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, reprints, newspaper clippings, drawings, photographs, phonograph records and other memorabilia.
Among much noteworthy material are the W. B. Laughead papers, secured through the good offices of Elwood Maunder, Executive Director, Forest History Foundation, and which include inter alia original cartoons, extensive correspondence - mainly with Max Gartenberg, Louis A. Maier, Franklin J. Meine and Archie Walker, sketches and finished drawings, a file of Red River Lumber Company ads from the American Lumberman and Mississippi Valley Lumberman from 1915 to 1949, and stories both in pamphlet and manuscript form. From James Stevens of Seattle we have received an extensive collection of his manuscripts (again thanks to Mr. Mauder), correspondence - mainly with Alfred Knopf and H. L. Mencken, but including letters from Stuart Chase, Louis Adamic and William Green of the AFL, clippings, photographs, and so on. Mrs. Dorothy Moulding Brown of Madison, Wisconsin, another notable collector of Paul Bunyan lore, donated a variety of material, which is now a part of the collection.
From the guide to the Paul Bunyan Collection, (University of Minnesota Libraries Children's Literature Research Collections [clrc])
