The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections The University of Toledo Finding Aid Frank H. Canaday Papers, 1911-1976 MSS-031 |
Size: 18 linear feet.
Provenance: After the death of Mr. Canaday, his papers went to his first wife Molly's niece, Alexis C. Hook. By a deed of gift dated March 19, 1984, Keith B. and Alexis C. Hook of Glastonbury, Connecticut, transferred title to this collection to the University of Toledo Libraries
Access: open
Collection Summary: Although the collection pertains primarily to personal interests and activities, including travel, writing, music, and art, a few materials document Canaday's work at Willys-Overland Motors, Inc. and the U.S. Advertising Corporation. Some items document wartime production of the Willys-Overland Jeep and marketing of Willys-Knight products in Australia, the Far East, and Europe. Board of Directors meeting minutes, financial records, annual reports, and clippings document the purchase of Willys-Overland Motors by Henry J. Kaiser in 1953.
Subjects: Business and Commerce, Music, Art, Drama & Theater, Travel, and War, Soldiers & Veterans
Copyright: The literary rights to this collection are assumed to rest with the person(s) responsible for the production of the particular items within the collection, or with their heirs or assigns. Researchers bear full legal responsibility for the acquisition to publish from any part of said collection per Title 17, United States Code. The Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections may reserve the right to intervene as intermediary at its own discretion.
Completed by: Paul M. Gifford, November 1986; last updated: June, 2014
Introduction
The papers of Frank H. Canaday, advertising and corporate executive and brother of Ward M. Canaday, Chairman of the Board of Willys-Overland Motors, Inc., contain correspondence, journals, scrapbooks, photographs, a novel, and various records of his financial and business activities. The content of the papers reflect Canaday's interests well. He cared little for business, unfortunately for most researchers, so only a small proportion of the papers pertain to his activity in that area. Most of the material has to do with his personal interests; these include travel, writing, music, and art. Nevertheless, those researching Willys-Overland and Ward M. Canaday will not be completely disappointed. Letters from Ward can be found in abundance throughout the entire correspondence series, and many provide a good insight into his character. Willys-Overland material is mainly from 1928-1929 and the postwar period. It documents the companies efforts to expand overseas markets, postwar marketing, and its sale to Henry J. Kaiser in 1953.
Researchers in other areas, including Harvard alumni, Toledo music and art in the 1940s, and world travel, will also find considerable items of interest.
No restrictions have been placed on the use of this collection.
Biographical Sketch
1893, Sept. 21 |
Born in New Castle, Indiana, third son of Miles M. and Sarah H. |
1910 - |
Graduated from New Castle High School. |
1913 - |
Traveled to Brazil. |
1914 - |
B. A. (English Literature), Harvard College. |
1914-1916 |
Advertising Manager, American Journal of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts. |
1916-1917 |
General Advertising Assistant, Husband & Thomas (advertising agency), Chicago, Illinois. |
1917-1919 |
Lieutenant, 333rd Field Artillery, mainly active as French translator; after armistice, with Rent, Reclamation and Claims Service of U. S. Army. |
1919-1920 |
General Assistant, J. Roland Kay Company (international advertising agency), Chicago, Illinois. |
1921 - |
Assistant, Advertising Department. Guaranty Trust Company, New York, N. Y. |
1922 - |
Assistant, A. F. Thane and Company (import-export firm). |
1922-1926 |
Advertising Manager, Wing Tai Vo Tobacco Corporation (subsidiary of British-American Tobacco Corporation), Shanghai, China. |
1926-1930 |
Manager, Foreign Department, United States Advertising Corporation, Toledo, Ohio. |
1928-1929 |
Traveled to Oceania, arranging advertising contracts for Willys-Knight. |
1931-1936 |
Copywriter, United States Advertising Corporation. |
1932, Dec. |
Married Mary Russell (Molly) Morpeth of Wellington, New Zealand, in Toledo. |
1936-1948 |
Account Executive, United States Advertising Corporation and its successors, Ewell & Thurber Associates and Canaday, Ewell Thurber, Inc., Toledo, Ohio. |
1936-1953 |
Director, Willys-Overland Motors, Inc. |
1939-1940 |
Consular Agent for Republic of France, Toledo, Ohio. |
1946 - |
Moved to New York, N. Y., in order to write novels and short stories; semi-retired |
1950 - |
Bought summer house in South Woodstock, Vermont. |
1976 - |
Wrote and had published, Triumph in Color: Molly Morpeth Canaday. |
1976, June 13. |
Died in Hanover, New Hampshire. |
Scope and Content Note
As noted in the Introduction, the Frank H. Canaday Papers reflect those activities in which Canaday was most strongly interested. By 1935, at the height of his business career, he felt unhappy with his career. At the time of his retirement in 1946, he looked back on his years in advertising as having been destructive. He felt his real interests and talents lay elsewhere ---- in writing short stories and novels, in current events, in art and music, and especially in travel. Canaday, a bon vivant, fluent in French and knowledgeable in several other languages, possessed a ready wit and made friends easily. His papers demonstrate both his lack of interest in business and his wide-ranging, yet persistent, personal interests.
Canaday's frustration with his career stemmed, no doubt, from his complicated relationship with his elder brother, Ward. Frank consistently admired Ward, and Ward reciprocated; yet Frank carefully maintained a separate identity. The incoming correspondence is liberally sprinkled with letters from Ward. In Frank's college years, Ward rather domineeringly suggested to him what courses to take and in what kind of activities to participate. As the years progressed, business letters alternated with frequent, but short personal greetings. In sum, the letters, documents, and photographs of Ward, his wife and family contribute a great deal toward our understanding of the Toledo industrialist. Anyone researching the life of the Chairman of the Board of Willys-Overland Motors, Inc., then, will find material here of a definitely productive value.
Less can be said for the research value of the material relating to the U. S. Advertising Corporation, Willys-Knight Motors, and Willys-Overland Motors. The greatest historical interest in any of these companies is likely to revolve around the production of Jeeps during World War II. Unfortunately, the War years are represented only by a manuscript, "How Come the Jeep" by publicist A. Wade Wells (published later as Hail to the Jeep: A Factual and Pictorial History of the Jeep. New York: Harper, 1946) and by a few public relations-related items in the scrapbooks. On the other hand, certain other records are useful in researching other aspects of those companies. The incoming and outgoing correspondence files for 1928 and 1929 and the reports of foreign conditions document the marketing and advertising of Willys-Knight products in Australia, the Far East, and Europe, as well as the automobile market in those areas generally. Frank Canaday’s copies of the minutes of the Board of Directors, financial records, annual reports, and clippings in the scrapbooks are a fruitful source for the history of the purchase of Willys-Overland Motors, Inc., by Henry J. Kaiser in 1953. For other years, however, material on the U.S. Advertising Corporation and on Willys-Overland tends to be sparse.
One long-standing interest covered by the entire range of the papers was in Harvard University. As a student, Canaday wrote for the Crimson and saved his stories in a scrapbook. A journal he kept in 1914 records events of the year in which he graduated. He belonged to the Harvard Clubs of New York and Toledo and regularly attended class reunions. The Hoosier-born Canaday loved the New England and Harvard mystique. On advice of his brother, he cultivated the "old boy" network; among his correspondents over the years were classmates Christian A. Herter, Leverett Saltonstall, and Wilmington, Delaware financier, Alfred Dupont Chandler, Jr. If not concerned with affairs of Harvard alumni, the content of Canaday’s correspondence with Herter and Saltonstall tends to contain Canaday’s comments on public affairs with acknowledgments by both of them. Correspondence with Chandler is of a more personal nature. Chandler's long letters mainly discuss his philosophy about finance and public affairs. Canaday launched a quixotic campaign in 1963 and 1964 among Harvard alumni organizations to halt the merger of Harvard and Radcliffe. The considerable correspondence generated by this effort demonstrates sentiment for and against this merger. Harvard-related material continues on as late as 1969, when Canaday and Harvard's Houghton Library negotiated for a gift which never reached fruition.
This collection may be useful to researchers wishing to study concert music in Toledo. Frank and Molly, Canaday were avid concert-goers and in the 1940s actively supported the Friends of Music, a Toledo organization which led ultimately to the creation of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. Many programs can be found in the scrapbooks for those years.
Molly was serious about her painting and in her last years, having developed a mature style, enjoyed a modest reputation. Although this collection will probably yield little to researchers interested in studying art in Toledo, it does contain a long series of correspondence with the Viennese refugee painter, Joseph Floch and with the art historian, Hans Tietze. Frank was devoted to his wife and to her interests. In his final years, he organized material from his scrapbooks in order to write a book about Molly entitled, (Triumph in Color: The Life and Art of Molly Morpeth Canaday. Canaan, N. H.: Phoenix Publishing, 1976).
Frank's World War I experiences are well documented. Frequent letters, to his sister-in-law, Miriam Coffin Canaday, describe his activities. A journal (scrapbooks 4 and 5) provides a chronological record. It is liberally illustrated with photographs and a variety of memorabilia. Some correspondence during this period was carried on in French.
Travel, as noted before, was a passion shared by both Frank and Molly. A journal describes his visit to Brazil in 1913. The 1922-1926 sojourn in China is not well documented in this collection since his files and scrapbooks for those years have been donated to the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University. The 1928-1929 world trip was strictly for business, but photographs do document some of his tours to places like Angkor Wat and his shipboard socializing. On this trip he met a British military officer, James Walker, with whom he maintained a friendship for many years. A number of letters and other material from Walker describe the development of the Benguela Railway in Angola and the Katanga controversy of the early 1960s. Other trips, to New Zealand and to Europe, were made in the 1950s and 1960s. Journals for those trips, illustrated by photographs and memorabilia, can be found in the scrapbooks. Entries typically record where Frank and Molly stayed, where they ate, what they visited, and whom they saw.
The scrapbooks generally contain a variety of materials; many, however, of dubious historical value. Letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, calling cards, and other items comprise the content of the typical scrapbook. Frank Canaday was an "idea man" and was eager to share his views with journalists, writers, politicians, and marketing agents. If something struck his momentary fancy, he did not hesitate to offer his ideas to any of those people. His political awareness was heightened mainly during presidential election years, although he frequently expressed his opinion to his representatives in Congress. Much of his correspondence, both in the correspondence files and in the scrapbooks, belongs to this category. Likewise, Canaday frequently saved newspaper clippings and articles from popular magazines on a wide variety of subjects, mainly of a general-interest nature.
The researcher should be alerted, nevertheless, to items of greater interest in the scrapbooks. Willys-Overland annual reports, Toledo photographs, and certain significant letters can be found in certain scrapbooks.
Since for much of Canaday's life, his business and family life were closely intertwined, his correspondence files contain both business, family, and personal letters. Significant correspondents include Ward M. Canaday, Miriam Coffin Canaday, Wilbur ("Jack") Canaday, Miron Canaday, Mrs. Sarah H. Canaday, Doreen Canaday Spitzer; his wife's New Zealand relatives, Charlton D. Morpeth, Nona Greig, Pat Entrican, and others; and friends James Dulin, Alfred D. Chandler, Frederick and Emma Endres Kountz, Robert Ayers, James Walker, Joseph Floch, Henri Jegu, and Robert Lexow Grant.
Folder List
Box |
Folder |
Arrangement |
1 18
2
2
3
4
4
5.
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
12
OS OS 13
14
15
16
17
17
18 |
1
4 6 16 18 28 36 7 22 35 38 39 42 43 2 4 6 10 18 23 18
24 32 44
1 2 5 10 14 28 31
1 2 |
Scrapbooks (number, inclusive years, and content, if Short Story and Skit |
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