Finding Aids

Frank A. Weer (1932-2019) was a white-collar railroad employee who spent most of his career with the Reading Company, and after the transfer of railroad operations in 1976, with Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail). This collection is a small portion of a much larger collection of official railroad company documents, maps and drawings. Documents are primarily those of the Reading Company, Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Penn Central Transportation Company and Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail).

Frank Elwin Ebersole (1871-1933) was a contract electrical engineer who installed automatic telephone systems throughout the United States during the early twentieth century. Ebersole was the proprietor of the Ebersole Construction Company; president of the Independent Telephone Company; and the general manager of the Northeastern Telephone Company, Lincoln Telephone Company, Evansville Telephone Company, Houston Home Telephone Company, and other related businesses. He engaged in the construction and installation of telephone services and support structures of each system, including their power plants. This small collection documents the business interests of an early telephone engineer and construction manager. The documents include telegrams and letters that provide detailed information on business relations, corporate financing, and equipment processing for installing early telephone service, as well as the challenges faced by suppliers of equipment used in said process.

Based in Wilmington, Delaware, Frank Earle Schoonover (1877-1972) was a prolific commercial illustrator, artist, and avid photographer. Over the course of a six-decade career, he completed more than twenty-five hundred works, primarily illustrations for magazines and books but also landscapes, portraits, murals, book plates, sculpture, and stained-glass windows. This collection consists of negatives taken by Schoonover, largely for use as source material for his artwork. There are also images of his artwork, restoration projects, and him, his family, and friends.

Frank G. Tallman (1860-1938) was an executive of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. The collection includes personal and business papers of Tallman such as diaries, letter books, and correspondence files.

Francis “Frank” Pierre Gentieu (1876-1950) was a ballistic engineer at E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. Gentieu worked at DuPont's Carney's Point Plant in New Jersey from 1901 to 1941. This small collection contains an account by Gentieu entitled "The First Fifty Years at Carney's Point" (1891-1941); correspondence with du Pont family members; a list of his father Pierre Gentieu's photographs of the DuPont Company and Brandywine area; and a recollection written by Samuel Brown of a conversation with Sophie M. du Pont (1810-1888) related to the Brandywine Manufacturers Sunday School.

Frank R. Zebley (1883-1960) was a Delaware native collector, photographer, author, and one-time speaker of the Delaware House of Representatives. He published Along the Brandywine and The Churches of Delaware. The Frank R. Zebley photograph albums includes nearly 1500 black and white photographs from the city of Wilmington, locations around Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania, and other places of interest in the mid-Atlantic region.

Frank Siedel (1914-1988) was a writer, educator, and broadcaster. He founded the firm Storycraft, Inc., an industrial writing company, in 1947 and wrote scripts at Storycraft until his death in 1988. This small collection documents a sample Siedel's work. The two largest groups of materials relate to The Ohio Story television series and the "In the Ohio Heritage" educational series. The materials date from 1947 to 1967, with a few items dated 1988.

Colonel Franklin T. Matthias (1908-1993) was commanding officer and area engineer of the Hanford Engineer Works of the Manhattan Engineer District. These are Colonel Matthias's personal papers documenting his work on the Manhattan Project. They include original declassified documents from Hanford and a variety of newspaper clippings and magazine articles collected by Matthias between the time he left Hanford to his death, reflecting his continuing interest in the Manhattan Project and nuclear power.

Franklin “Frank” T. Matthias (1908-1933) served as commanding officer and area engineer of Hanford Engineer Works from 1943 to 1945. He oversaw production of plutonium at Hanford to create the world’s first nuclear weapon, the atomic bomb. The bulk of the collection consists of photographs taken during the construction of the nuclear facilities at Hanford and the village of Richland in Washington state. Researchers interested in World War II, the Manhattan Project, industrial chemistry, nuclear energy, and company towns would find this collection useful.

Fred C. Ielfield (1864-1948) was a mechanical engineer and inventor. This collection consists of twelve patents for mail canceling and postmarking machinery, corn-husking machinery, and a cereal cutter, all invented by Ielfield.

Fred L. Bechly (1924-2004) was an electrical engineer who worked for RCA's Camden, New Jersey, plant, where he aided in the invention of the Tricolor Kinescope Monitor, which became the standard for color television. His papers describe his work with RCA in television and video recording from 1944 to 1983.

Frederick J. LeMaistre (1879-1944) was a chemical engineer employed by the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Powder Company at its Eastern Laboratory for fourteen years. This collection consists of ten volumes; seven are LeMaistre's laboratory notebooks documenting his work on nitrates, nitroglycerin, artificial silk (rayon), pyralin, and solvents. Also included are two souvenir logbooks of tours by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and one Niagara Oil Company of Philadelphia cashbook.

Frederick G. Singer (1897-1971) was a manager for the Tariff Division of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Development Department, working out of the foreign office in Paris, France. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. This small collection consists mostly of organizational charts and lists of officers and products of the DuPont Company and the Grasselli Chemical Company, as well as the products of their competitors, between 1936 and 1937.

For over fifty years the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was one of the country's leading manufacturers and vendors of radios, phonographs, televisions, and a wide array of consumer and military electronics products. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the Victor Talking Machine Company merged in 1929 becoming the RCA Victor Company in 1930. This merger allowed RCA to consolidate the research, engineering, manufacturing and sales of RCA products. This collection consists of negatives, a majority of which feature sound and television equipment manufactured by RCA. These images include phonographs, radios, radio-phonograph combinations, records, speakers, amplifiers, microphones, facsimile machines, televisions, equipment involved in the transmission and reception of television and radio waves, radio equipment created for use by government agencies and motion picture equipment.

Frederick William Wood (1857-1943) was an executive and engineer in the steel and shipbuilding industries. His papers constitute a major source on the history of the American steel industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The papers are primarily official records of the various companies with which Wood was associated.

Frederick William Wood (1857-1943) was an executive and engineer in the steel and shipbuilding industries. The Frederick W. Wood photographs document the career of Frederick W. Wood in the steel and shipbuilding industries, most notably his time working for Pennsylvania Steel Company at Steelton, Pennsylvania, Maryland Steel Company and Bethlehem Steel Company at Sparrows Point, Maryland, and the American International Shipbuilding Corporation at Hog Island Shipyard, located in Pennsylvania on the Delaware River. Researchers interested in the steel and iron industries, the shipbuilding industry, company towns, and the regional history of the greater Philadelphia and Baltimore areas would find this collection useful.

Frigidaire Corporation manufactures and distributes major appliances for domestic and industrial use. Gilead Elijah Turner (1903-1929) worked for the company's Advertising Stock Department from 1928 until his death in 1929. The scrapbook was assembled by Turner and dedicated to his co-worker, Dean M. Livingston (1903-1963), who worked in the same department. The album contains sales catalogs, sales forms, and pitches for the company refrigerators focusing on food preservation and avoiding food spoilage due to mold, yeast, and bacteria. Numerous newspaper clippings are about sales executives and company founders, developments in food safety, and the importance of hard work for company success.

G.C. Murphy Co. was a chain of discount variety stores. George Clinton Murphy (1868-1909) founded the G.C. Murphy Co. in 1906 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. it grew to more than 500 stores before its acquisition by Ames Department Stores Inc. in 1985. These photographs document window displays at a G.C. Murphy store in Washington, D.C. In 1906.

Gabriel Manigault (1758-1809) was a Charleston merchant, plantation owner, architect, and South Carolina state Representative. In 1805, Manigault sold part of his property in South Carolina and moved to Clifton, an estate near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These are copies of Manigault's letters relating to members of the du Pont family.

Gabrielle Crofton (1873-1952) was the daughter of Gabrielle Josephine Shubrick (1835-1894) and Robert Erskine Anderson Crofton (1834-1898), and the great-granddaughter of Victor Marie du Pont (1767-1827), a prominent French American diplomat and businessman. The collection consists of two diaries, dating from 1917 to 1926, and reflect the leisured life of a middle-class, unmarried woman in the first quarter of the twentieth century United States.

Gabrielle Josephine de La Fite de Pelleport (1770-1837) was the wife of Victor du Pont (1767-1827), a French American diplomat, politician, and businessman. He was the brother of Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), the founder of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. The account book is supposedly the household account book of du Pont and contains handwriting of various people, including her son Charles I. du Pont (1797-1869). Entries include purchases of coal, whiskey, soap, candles, and other items, as well as construction materials and tools.

Gabrielle Shubrick Crofton (1835-1894) was the daughter of Irvine Shubrick (1797-1849) and Julia du Pont (1806-1882), and the wife of Colonel Robert Crofton (1834-1898). His military service meant the family moved to where he was stationed. The papers consist primarily of correspondence between Crofton and her husband and mother, including an eight-year span living in army posts in the Dakota Territory.

Alfred Irénée du Pont (1864-1935) was the eldest son of E.I. du Pont (1829-1877). He joined the family gunpowder firm in 1884. Gabrielle Shubrick Crofton (1835-1894) was the daughter of Alfred I. du Pont's first cousin, Julia Sophia du Pont (1806-1882) and Irvine Shubrick (1797-1849). This collection consists of two individual portraits, one of Gabrielle Shubrick Crofton and the other of Alfred I. Du Pont.

Games of chance such as poker, blackjack, roulette, and craps are common table games played at casinos. This is a small collection of photographs and ephemera related to casino equipment. There are professional photographs and prints of blackjack, craps, and roulette tables, although it cannot be determined who the manufacturers are of these tables. None of the images is dated; the range is likely between the 1930s and 1940s.

The Gardner Machine Works specialized in manufacturing woodworking machinery, specifically those used to make chairs. This collection consists mainly of images of tools and machinery manufactured and sold by the Gardner Machine Works company. This collection has been organized into four series: Tools and machinery photographs and negatives; Trade catalogs and advertisements; Notebooks, drawings, and patents; and Scrapbooks. This collection would be of interest to those researching woodworking machinery, equipment, marketing, and design.

Gardner Associates performs oral history research for corporations and institutions in the Delaware Valley area. The company was founded in 1987 by Joel R. Gardner (1942-). Gardner Associates records reflect the company's business operations from 1988 through 2014. The collection has been arranged into three series: Administrative and consulting files; Clients and proposals; and Articles, publications, and presentations. The Clients and proposals series is the largest series, consisting of correspondence, research notes, interview transcripts, and project proposals.

Gayle Porter Hoskins (1887-1962) was an artist and illustrator active between the 1910s through the 1960s. This collection consists of two prints of Hoskins artwork related to rifles.

Geist & Geist, Inc., was a manufacturer of women's knitwear products, typical of the small, flexible family firms that dominated New York City's famous Garment District for much of the twentieth century. The records of Geist & Geist, Inc., document the activities, especially design, publicity and marketing.

The General Radio Company was incorporated in 1915, in Cambridge, Massachussets by Melville Eastham (1885-1964), and was famed for their development and manufacture of electronic instruments, test equipment, laboratory standards throughout the twentieth century. The General Radio Company History materials largely document the efforts to write a synthetic history of the General Radio Company in the late 1980s and early 1990s, supported by the IEEE History Center. While Joseph F. Keithley headed the project, it was conceived as a collaborative endeavor with various persons each writing a chapter on their topic of specialty. Additionally, there is a large binder labeled, “Company Data” containing alphabetically organized information about other firms involved in the manufacture and development of precision measuring instruments over the course of the twentieth century.

General Railway Signal Company supplied railway signaling equipment, systems, and services. In 1904, it was formed by the merger of three companies and was headquartered in Rochester, New York. This small collection of photographs showcases the company's work installing centralized traffic control systems, light signals, and car retarder systems.

World's Fairs or International Expositions are large-scale exhibitions that highlight technology, agriculture and other innovations of national or cultural significance. The New York World's Fair took place in Flushing Meadows, Queens from April 30, 1939 to October 31, 1940. The collection consists of ten photographs of the New York World's Fair.

Genevieve Pittner (1917-2007) of Monroe, Michigan, collected roller skating rink stickers between 1941 and 1942, amassing a large collection by exchanging stickers by mail with other collectors. This collection consists primarily of roller skating rink stickers during the World War II era. A large album contains most of the stickers in the collection; stickers are attached to album pages and arranged alphabetically by state.

The Geo D. Whitcomb Company was a manufacturer of coal mining machinery and industrial locomotives. The album is a factory salesman sample photograph album for the gasoline powered Whitcomb mining and switching engines. There are two Whitcomb catalogs and an original offprint from the 1932 Railway Age.

Geoffrey David Austrian (1930-) is an author and journalist. He first became interested in the life of Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), inventor of the puched-card system of data processing, while working for the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), the firm that grew out of Hollerith's invention. This collections includes the research materials Austrian used to write the book Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing. Austrian's research includes notes from interviews with Hollerith family members and copies of materials from the IBM archives and other repositories, including the New York Public Library.

George A. Richardson (1886-1976) was an engineer with an expertise in metallurgy. He spent his career primarily involved in technical publicity and sales for major steel manufacturers such as the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. The papers consist primarily of materials collected by Richardson during the performance of his official duties with the steel companies, in preparing technical lectures and papers, and in teaching courses in metallurgy.

George A. Richardson (1886-1976) was an engineer with an expertise in metallurgy. He spent his career primarily involved in technical publicity and sales for major steel manufacturers such as the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company and Metallurgical Laboratories, Inc. (METLAB). These records consist primarily of materials collected by Richardson during the performance of his official duties with the steel companies, in preparing technical lectures and papers, and in teaching courses in metallurgy.

George A. Richardson (1886-1976) was an engineer with an expertise in metallurgy, he spent his career primarily involved in technical publicity and sales for major steel manufacturers such as the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. This collection of photographs and negatives was primarily taken by George Atwell Richardson throughout the course of his career while working for Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. The images document views of steel plants and operations, as well as steel products mostly taken between 1913 and 1929. The collection has been organized into five series: Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company; Cambrian Steel Company; Bethlehem Steel Corporation; Exhibits, and Other steel and coal companies.

George Bowen (1799-1879) founded a ship chandler's business in Newport, Rhode Island, around 1829, as the George Bowen & Company. The fragmentary records consist of sixteen volumes of account books, which describe the mechanics of the business and the retail trade in coal and wood, giving names of customers, quantities of goods bought and sold, and operating expenses.

The George H. Gilbert & Company manufactured broadcloth and cloakings in Ware, Massachusetts, and high-grade woolen flannels, for which it developed a national reputation until 1930. The records consist of applications for fire insurance and insurance policies covering the woolen mill, Gilbert's house, tenant housing, and outbuildings.

George J. Frebert (1929-2002) was a pilot and aviation enthusiast. He authored the book Delaware Aviation History. The collection contains both materials used in the preparation of Delaware Aviation History and other items that Frebert collected dealing with Delaware aviation, aviators and airports. Much of the material was copied from historical repositories, but Frebert also collected original materals and photos from other early aviators.

George J. Frebert (1929-2002) was a pilot and aviation enthusiast who served in the Air Force during the Korean War, operated the Dover Litho Printing Company in Dover, DE, published "Delaware Aviation History," and restored vintage airplanes as a hobby. This collection contains both materials used in the preparation of "Delaware Aviation History" and other items that Frebert collected dealing with Delaware aviation, aviators and airports.

George Levitt (1925-), a DuPont Company chemist working at the Experimental Station, discovered sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides in 1976 after two decades of experimentation. This collection consists of six of Levitt's laboratory notebooks documenting milestones in herbicide discovery.

George Parshall (1929-2019) was an organometallic chemist who made notable contributions to homogeneous catalysis. He worked as a senior scientist at E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company for thirty-eight years. This small collection mainly consists of a three-volume autobiography that covers Parshall's life, from growing up during the Great Depression, World War II, education, marriage and family, and career with the DuPont Company.

George Washington Rains (1817-1898) was a United States Army and Confederate Army officer and proprietor in the Washington Iron Works. This war-date memorandum by Rains gives a full look at the successful Confederate crash program to develop reliable sources of munitions under wartime conditions and gives clues to the skills of the person who managed it.

George Whitelock (1780-1833) was a cabinetmaker and chair-maker in Wilmington, Delaware. This item is a bill for a coffin for Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817), a French political economist, writer, publisher, and public administrator.

George Y. Swickard (1906-1958) was a medical doctor involved in industrial medicine who worked with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. During World War II, Swickard worked as a medical supervisor with the DuPont Company at various locations, including atomic research projects at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and at Hanford, Washington. This collection consists of certificates, newsletters, pamphlets, and souvenir programs amassed by Swickard, mostly in the course of his work for DuPont.

Gilbert P. Church (1910-1993) was a civil engineer and the field project manager for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. His papers relate to the construction by DuPont for the United States government of the Hanford Engineer Works plutonium plant near Pasco, Washington.

Gilpin, Van Trump & Montgomery, Inc. provided insurance sales and service to property owners. The business was established in 1865 in Wilmington, Delaware, by businessman James Woolley (1818-1886). By the early-to-mid twentieth century, the company specialized in real estate sales and service, as well as mortgages, becoming Delaware's only full-service real estate organization. The records include minutes, corporate histories, publicity material, as well as information on company properties, and documents the company's rise from a small insurance company to a large, multi-service insurance, real estate, mortgage, and investment firm.

In 1811, Girard's Bank was established in the former First Bank of the United States headquarters in order to maintain adequate banking facilities for Philadelphia. This manuscript lists all of the stockholders of the Girard Bank as of October 22, 1839.

Coatesville is a city along the Brandywine River in Chester County, Pennsylvania. This item is a booklet containing 16 postcards with images of sites in and around Coatesville, Pennsylvania.