Hagley Museum staff conducted a series oral history interviews between 1954 and 1990, speaking primarily with individuals who had worked at the DuPont Company powder yards on Brandywine Creek during the yards’ final decades of operation or who had lived near the yards as spouses or children of DuPont Co. workers. Some of the individuals who were interviewed donated, lent for copying, or provided information on the photographs in this collection. The images primarily depict the worker communities which surrounded the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company powder yards on Brandywine Creek or the powder yards themselves.

Consists of the family papers of former DuPont CEO Lammot du Pont Copeland (1905-1983) and his wife Pamela Cunningham Copeland (1906-2001). The Copelands' papers document the lives and interests of a wealthy American couple in the twentieth century. In particular, the papers of Pamela C. Copeland are an important source of information about the public activities of women in the areas of historic preservation, gardening and horticulture, and philanthropy.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). This collection of more than 1250 discrete photographs depicts the landscape and buildings at or near the company's explosives manufacturing plants along Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware. Approximately 900 images depict powder yard sites, including the DuPont Experimental Station, either during the mills' final decades of operation or prior to, during, and after excavation and restoration work on the site in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of the remaining images depict the worker communities which surrounded the powder yards.

This collection contains research reports for the purpose of developing and elaborating exhibits and interpretations of the Hagley Museum. The reports were prepared by a permanent research staff and by participants in the Hagley Fellowship Program. The research reports also include scholarly articles that use Hagley's collections or are about subjects that pertain to Hagley's mission.

Eugene S. Ferguson (1916-2004) was one of the founders of the discipline of the history of technology, both through teaching at Iowa State University and the University of Delaware and by working at the Smithsonian Institution and the Hagley Museum. This collection documents the first twenty years of the history of technology as an academic discipline, and networking among its practitioners.

John Joseph Beer (1927-) was a professor of the history of science and chemistry at the University of Delaware until his retirement in 1992. Beer played a major role in developing the university’s program in the history of technology and the Hagley Fellowship Program. The bulk of the papers consists of correspondence, notes, research materials, and drafts for a projected book or article on "Russia iron," a highly finished, wear-resistant iron produced in Russia during the nineteenth century.

The collection comprises approximately 200 oral history interviews with 152 individuals conducted by museum staff between 1954 and 1990. The majority of the individuals interviewed had either worked at the DuPont Company powder yards on Brandywine Creek during the yards’ final decades of operation or had lived in the surrounding communities, although the collection also includes interviews with those who worked in other local industries. The interviews are largely biographical in nature covering a period from about 1900 to 1960 and address a wide range of subjects relating to daily life and work in the Brandywine Valley.