Finding Aids

A.R. Moen (1799-1867) was a traveling agent for the Collins & Company, a tool manufacturer. In the letter to the company, Moen discusses and provides a sketch of a new axe he has invented.

Aaron A. Maple (1866-1938) was an asbestos building supplies traveling salesman for the Ohio branch of the Asbestos Shingle, Slate & Sheathing Co. This small collection contains fourteen of Maple's personal diaries from 1920 to 1936 (with some gaps) that document his home life, expenses, work, and travel throughout the northern and northwestern parts of the state.

Avon Products, Inc. is a manufacturer and direct selling company of beauty products. It is one of the oldest direct selling companies in America. The company was founded in 1886 by David H. McConnell (1856-1937) as the California Perfume Company (CPC). McConnell established a manufacturing headquarters and research laboratory in Suffern, New York, in the 1890s. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, CPC expanded its line of products to include cosmetics, household cleaners, food flavorings, and toiletries. The collection consists of photographs, negatives, slides, films, videos and sound recordings date from 1856 to 2000. The materials depict Avon products, their manufacture, packaging and sale, Avon employees and representatives and the offices, laboratories, factories and other structures owned by Avon Products, Inc. The collection is organized into ten series: Administration, Conferences, Non-sales employees, Domestic locations, International locations, Public relations, Sales managers and representatives, Selling methods and sales aids, Company history and philosophy, and Library, music, and museum.

Bartley Crucible & Refractories, Inc. manufactured graphite crucibles in a plant at 67 Oxford Street in Trenton, New Jersey, a major center for the pottery industry. The company was originally named the Jonathan Bartley Crucible Company and was incorporated on February 24, 1908. This collection consists of the business records of the firm throughout its various name changes and the personal papers of two owners: Lewis H. Lawton (1876-1953), a former master bricklayer, and Walter L. Shearer (1900-1984), a ceramic engineer who had been a consultant to Bartley since 1930. None of the records are complete. The business records and the Shearer papers and ephemera represent selections of much larger bodies of material, while the Lawton papers are an accidentally preserved sample from the plant. Substantive correspondence has been sifted from a large mass of orders, bills, and receipts. A sample of more routine correspondence has been saved to give an accurate picture of each firm's trading relationships. The Shearer materials have been sampled to present a picture of his education, personality, and social life.

Campbell Soup Company is a processed food manufacturing corporation based in the United States. Founded in 1869, the Campbell Soup Company primarily sold canned vegetables, soups, and other non-perishable items until 1897, when the development of a method to produce flavorful condensed soup propelled the company to one of the largest food corporations in the world. The collection consists of five films produced by the Campbell Soup Company sales department from 1940 through the 1960s, focusing on sales personnel training and company promotions.

Vicary’s Clothing Store was a men’s clothing store located in Canton, Ohio founded by C.N. (Charles Newell) Vicary (1858-1921) in 1905. This album contains brochures, reports, stock certificates and photographs of the clothing store and its employees. There are exterior views of the store front at various locations, interior views of the store showing different fixtures, different departments, including staff members in the store and individual portraits of staff members.

The Coca-Cola Company is a software beverage manufacturer. It was formulated in 1886 by Dr. John Stith Pemberton (1831-1888) as a medicinal syrup for headaches. The company has since evolved into a corporation producing beverages and associated products. This small collection is a 1949 salesman training kit. Researchers interested in merchandise and training procedures regarding the Coca-Cola Company would find this collection useful.

Chemists at DuPont’s Parlin, New Jersey laboratory produced a pyroxylin lacquer in 1920 called Viscolac and improved upon it in the following years and renamed it Duco. In the late 1920s Dulux was developed, which was an alkyd finish and had a higher gloss finish; a matte version of Dulux was also developed. This collection is a packet of advertising and sales aids for dealers of DuPont Duco and Dulux paints and finishes.

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.

Harry J. Haon II (1901-1989) and his son Harry J. Haon III (1934-2013) were chemists and lifetime employees of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, and both came to specialize in sales and marketing. The Harry J. Haon family papers are a collection of correspondence, meeting notes/minutes, drawings/maps, journal articles, DuPont publications, papers expressing once classified information about DuPont products, as well as teaching materials for employees who were novice marketing managers, sales personnel and employees in leadership positions. The collection is composed of two series consisting of the papers of Harry J. Haon, II and Harry J. Haon, III. The careers in DuPont of both Haons are well documented.

Belle M. Sherman (1851-1930) was a New York writer, translator, and editor who edited the women's page of the New York Herald, and wrote for magazines such as Colliers and the old Cosmopolitan under the byline of Mrs. B.M. Sherman or Belle M. Sherman. The collection contains incoming letters, the bulk from her son, Walter Magee Annette (1874-1955), but also her daughter-in-law Jane Nuckols (1878-unknown), and a column reader.

Kay Brownlee (1912-1971) was employed at the Philadelphia department store B.F. Dewees. She was originally a buyer for women's fashions, but later rose to be personnel director, a post she held until the store closed in the late 1960s. This collection contains personal and family items from Kay Brownlee, records from Brownlee's work as personnel director of B.F. Dewees department store, and documents regarding the operations of the store and its female employees.

Lukenweld, Inc. was the first U.S. commercial shop to cut and fabricate shapes from steel plate by arc welding. The records are files of Robert C. Sahlin (1896-1967), a member of Lukenweld's sales staff. Sahlin's files record his dealings with Lukenweld's customers and his other activities as a salesman. Most Lukenweld orders were custom work, fabricating individual machine parts, so there was frequent interplay between sales and engineering staff.

MCI Communications Corporation (MCI) was a large telecommunications company. It was organized in October 1963 in Joliet, Illinois, by John D. (Jack) Goeken (1930-2010), as Microwave Communications, Inc. Goeken and his partners were planning to provide point-to-point private line microwave communications between Chicago and St. Louis to small businesses. This large collection documents the activities of the MCI Communications Corporation and its subsidiaries as well as the development of a competitive telecommunications industry in the United States and worldwide. The materials focus on MCI corporate life, public relations, technical operations, and sales and marketing activities. A vast amount of videotapes makes up a significant portion of the MCI collection, however, there are also photographs, slides, digital files, and audio cassette tapes.

The Quaker Lace Company manufactured Nottingham lace and was one of the textile firms founded by John Bromley (1800-1883) and his seven sons. The records represent a fraction of the total Quaker Lace archive which was salvaged from the 4th and Lehigh mill during the liquidation of the company. The collection is arranged into seven series: General administrative files and correspondence; Sale literature; Advertising and promotional materials; Production records; Legal records; Financial records; and Tax records.

Simon Bolivar Camacho (1859-1906) was a traveling sales representative for the American Bank Note Company, a dominant American producer of bank notes, stock and bond certificates and similar commercial paper. The collection includes his diaries between 1892 and 1904, mostly relating to business travels in Latin America, but also containing information on daily events in the New York City area, news of the day, and domestic, personal and religious reflections.

This collection helps to document the history of Singer Manufacturing Company during the period 1860 through 1880. After success in forming one of the first U.S. patent pools the Singer Company was ready to capitalize and built several new factories. Since the demand for family sewing machines had increased substantially, Singer made it economically possible to buy the new and improved machines by offering installment payment plans.

The Soo Hardware Company was a full-service hardware wholesale and retail store located in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It carried a complete line of building materials, plumbing and electrical supplies, stoves and furnaces, major and minor domestic appliances, housewares, sporting goods, and bicycle and auto parts. The records consist of inbound correspondence received between the years 1911 and 1918. The bulk of the correspondence consists of sales letters and invoices from manufacturers and wholesalers, covering the wide range of semi-finished and manufactured goods sold by the Soo Hardware Company. A large number appear to be unsolicited mailings from salesmen, while others document a long working relationship.

'Sponsored film' defines a variety of motion picture productions funded by businesses, organizations, or governments that dictate the film's point of view, audience, and intent. Industrial or business films are a subgenre of sponsored films with content that markets products and ideas, touts a particular company or industry, trains employees, and explains manufacturing or transactional processes around creating and selling products and ideas. The Sponsored and Industrial Motion Picture Film Collection at Hagley is an artificial collection compiled by curators that includes single motion picture films or small sets of films acquired via purchase or donation.

Tazewell Lamar McCorkle Sr. was regarded as a leading authority in the field of commercial explosives. Trained as a chemical engineer, McCorkle spent more than thirty years as a sales representative with the Explosives Department of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. The papers are composed entirely of copies of official DuPont Company materials that McCorkle retained after his retirement. These files provide extensive documentation of departmental policies and procedures governing the storage and delivery of DuPont explosives.

The Bronfman family of Canada acquired the Joseph E. Seagram & Sons Co. of Waterloo, Ontario, in 1927. By the 1950s, Seagram was one of the world's largest alcoholic beverage firms. This collection is composed of photographs used as illustrations in The Seagram Spotlight, a "monthly house organ published by and for the staff of Seagram Distiller's Corporation," according to the 20th anniversary issue (December 1936).

Frigidaire Corporation manufactures and distributes major appliances for domestic and industrial use. By 1929, Frigidaire sold one million refrigerators. This item is a floor demonstration display catalog, a well-illustrated sales pitch for purchasing Frigidaire's refrigerators. It includes text, diagrams, color plates of Frigidaire models, and black-and-white photographs.

Thomas J. Godson (1894-1992) was an employee of the DuPont Company for thirty four years, primarily working in the Paint and Varnish Division. This collection relfects the career of Godson and includes sales materials, manuals, newsletters and other documents primarily related to DuPont's "Duco" paints.

Thomas Lansford Foster (1894-1956) was manager of export sales for Baldwin Locomotive Works in Eddystone, Pennsylvania. Baldwin Locomotive Works was a manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 until 1972. This small colleciton consistate of five photographs showing Thomas L. Foster with other Baldwin staff and customers visiting the headquarters.

The Zanol Products Company was a door-to-door consumer goods distributor. Founded in Cincinnati, Ohio circa 1908, Zanol developed its own line of household products which the company sold directly to consumers via door-to-door representatives. This collection consists of one salesman's case containing pamphlets, trade cards, trade catalogs, sewing needle cases, books of blank order forms, and other ephemera from the Zanol Products Company.