This collection contains materials that belonged to members of several generations and family branches (McGinnis, Crissey, Fitch, Bennett and Perstein) dating back to the early 1800s. William E. Crissey was born 1840 in Lewisboro, New York and relocated to Warrensburg, Missouri in 1865 after being honorably discharged from his service in the Civil War. He married Mary Elizbeth Doty (born 1841 in Sheridan, New York) in Johnston, Michigan in 1866, and they had six children, including Nellie (Crissey) McCaskill, Mary Elizabeth, who died of scarlet fever in 1910, Maude Doty, and Ethel Doty. Both the Crisseys and the Dotys settled in the American colonies in the 17th century.

Maude Doty Crissey married Howard Fitch and relocated to Minnesota, where they had three children. Their daughter Mabel Fitch, born in 1892 in Minnesota and died in 1985 in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, has papers found in this collection, as does her relative Nelle Crissey Fitch, who was a set designer for the theatre in the 1930s.

Nellie Crissey married Charles Wallace McCaskill in 1898. She traveled around Europe and the Middle East in the early 1920s and died in 1928 in Beatrice, Nebraska.

James Crain McGinnis, born 1830 in Pulaski County, Kentucky, permanently relocated to Missouri in 1858. He married Sophia Debenham (born 1836) in 1857, and they had one child, Clive McGinnis, born in 1877 in St. Louis, MO. James Crain McGinnis served in both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War before holding office in the Missouri state legislature, in both the house and senate, until his death in 1893. Dr. Clive Sidney McGinnis served in World War I and was later superintendent of the State Hospital for Epileptics in Parsons, Kansas during the 1920s and 1930s. He died of a heart attack in 1937.

Ethel or Ethyl Doty Crissey (born in Warrensburg, Missouri) married Clive McGinnis in 1918 at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. They had a daughter, Elizabeth McGinnis, who went by the name of Timmie or Timi throughout her life. Elizabeth (Timmie) McGinnis married Earl Fred Bennett in 1942. They had two children: Michael Bennett (born in 1943 in San Francisco, California and dying as a young adult) and Pieter Bennett. Timmie divorced Bennett in 1949 and in 1951 remarried to Millard Perstein. They had one daughter, Angela Perstein, who donated this collection of family papers. Timmie and Millard divorced in 1962, though it appears she continued to go by Timmie Perstein. Timmie was a teacher in special education after learning painting under Thomas Hart Benton at the Kansas City Art Institute.

[Information retrieved from collection materials, notes provided by donor, and findagrave.com.]