Sullivan Family Collection

Containing over 300 items, the Sullivan Family Collection features an assortment of checks, bills, promissory notes, receipts, deeds, and related documents. Patrick Sullivan, Sr., was a capitalist in Clarksville from the latter half of the nineteenth century until his death in 1906. Deeds, promissory notes, tax receipts, and checks show Sullivan's business dealings in the area. Sullivan, along with his wife Honora, accumulated numerous properties in Clarksville. Honora, intemittently listed as Hanorah, Hannah, and Nora, served as executor of her husband's will and survived him by fourteen years. Their daughter Ellen married P.J. Moran; thus, the Morans and Sullivans appear together in tax records. Following the death of her brother William Sullivan in 1907, Ellen Moran inherited real estate valued at $6,000. In 1928, records show Ellen as the owner of a building on Strawberry Street (now Strawberry Alley). A mix of city and county tax receipts further reveal the property holdings of Ellen Moran and family members through 1939.

The Sullivan Family Collection provides a glimpse into late 19th to early 20th-century Clarksville through one family's documents. The Morans and Sullivans frequented local businesses, including Brenner Furniture Company, Dickson-Sadler Company, and Gossett & Rollow on Franklin Street. In addition to a furniture department, Gossett & Rollow provided arrangements for funerals. T.E. McReynolds, Gossett & Rollow's predecessor, occupied the same 125 Franklin Street location and also offered both furniture and undertaking/embalming servives. Papers within this collection show both the Morans and Sullivans opening lines of credit at these buisnesses. For example, through monthly payments at Dickson-Sadler Company, Ellen Moran purchased a piano. The Sullivans were one of the prominent Catholic families in turn-of-the-century Clarksville. Part of the Sullivan Family Collection includes Catholic religious materials, such as small devotional books and pamphlets, dating primarily to the 1930s and 1940s.