Finding Aids

The John F. Tucker Transit History Collection consists of official documents produced or used by Mr. Tucker during his career as a public transit official, records of the pre-SEPTA Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (1907-1939) and the Philadelphia Transportation Company (1940-1968) that he preserved from loss or destruction, and materials collected out of his interest in the history of transit systems, particularly electric traction lines. The collection traces the evolution of the Philadelphia transit system, its extent, routes and services, and of North American rail rapid transit generally.

John Farrell Metten (1873-1968) was a marine engineer and shipbuilding industry executive. This collection contains photographic prints, postcards, documents, drawings, and an identification card pertaining to the career of John Farrell Metten and views of Naval ships built at the New York Shipbuilding Company, Camden, New Jersey.

John G. Townsend Jr. (1871-1964) was a politician, a businessman, and a banker. He served as Governor of Delaware from 1917 to 1921 and as Delaware’s U.S. Senator from 1929 to 1941. He operated a lumber business, cannery, orchard, and then a large poultry farm called Townsend Inc. Farms. This small collection documents Townsend’s work in politics and in the poultry industry. There is a fair amount of biographical information authored by Louise Stanton Johnson, who worked as Townsend’s secretary during his time as Senator. The collection has been arranged into four series: Governor and Senatorial papers; Townsend Inc. Farms records; Louise Stanton Johnson papers and Printing plates and seals. The materials in the collection date from 1908 to 1977, with a bulk of the materials from the 1930s through the 1950s.

The John Gordon Rideout papers illustrate the career of John Gordon "Jack" Rideout (1898-1951), a noted industrial designer. Rideout began his career in sales, moved into advertising, and eventually opened industrial design firms in Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. Highlights of the collection are images of Skippy Racer, perfume atomizers designed for DeVilbiss, the Shell-Back metal chair designed for Calumet Chair Company, and his classic re-design of Magnalite Cookware for the Wagner Manufacturing Company.

The John Horn Printing Company was a printing firm that specialized in printing labels and ribbons. This sample album contains 131 embossed die-cut labels pasted on thirty-two pages for a variety of products.

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.

John J. Raskob (1879-1950) was a prominent business and political figure in the early twentieth century. A top financial executive for both E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and the General Motors Corporation, Raskob was heavily involved in politics, serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1928 to 1932. Meyer Blumenthal (1888-1951) founded Blumenthal Brothers, a Philadelphia chocolate company. In this letter, Raskob urges Blumenthal to join the American Liberty League.

The collection documents Raskob's business and political careers as well as his personal life. The papers document significant aspects of the histories of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and the General Motors Corporation during the first half of the twentieth century.

John Raskob (1879-1950) was a financial executive for the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. and General Motors, and builder of the Empire State Building. The collection primarily consists of construction progress photographs of the Durant Building in Detroit, Michighan in 1919 and 1920. There is a small set of images of a renovation at Raskob's Archmere estate in 1916, and a few portraits and snapshots of Raskob.

John K. Jenney (1904-2005) was the director of the Foreign Relations Department at DuPont Company. In the oral history, Jenney reminiscences on his early life in Syracuse, New York; his time at Princeton University; and his career with the DuPont Company, dating from the 1920s to the 1960s.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. This collection consists of two bank books and a ledger.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. L. C. Siner & Co. was the successor company that continued Krider's business into the 1930s. This small collection of business papers documents Krider's and L. C. Siner & Co.'s gunsmith and sporting goods shop. It includes bills and receipts for guns, fishing equipment, ammunition, lumber, and other items sold in the store.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. This collection consists of fifty-nine account books (1840-1939), including wage accounts (1853-1857), accounts for the repairs of guns (1904-1909), records of daily powder sales (1891-1893), and the treasurer's record for an unidentified gun club.

John Krider (1813-1886) was one of Philadelphia's most prominent gunsmiths during the nineteenth century. This item is a receipt book containing the signatures of numerous Philadelphia merchants.

John M. Tinker (1897-1974) was the director of Jackson Laboratory, the main research unit of the Organic Chemicals Department of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, from 1943 to 1962. After his retirement, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service and worked for three years as the science attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan. This small collection of Tinker's papers is related to both his time at Jackson Laboratory and his work for the U.S. government.

John Margolies (1940-2016) was an American photographer and architecture critic with a fondness for novelty architecture. This is his personal collection of travel ephemera that he collected from across North America. These materials primarily cover the United States’ most popular tourist spots with an emphasis on the Northeast region of the United States.

John Margolies (1940-2016) was an American photographer and architecture critic with a fondness for novelty architecture. This is his personal collection of postcards and photographs from across North America. These materials primarily cover the United States’ most popular tourist spots along with various businesses. There is heavy coverage of the Northeast region of the United States, where Margolies lived most of his life. Postcards are primarily from the first half of the twentieth century, and photographs primarily span circa 1890-1920s. Postcards cover a wide range of subjects from famous attractions to local businesses, and photographs are almost entirely local businesses, many being interior views of family owned businesses with their owners. Few objects are contained within the collection, including signs from local businesses and a scrapbook from the honeymoon of an unidentified couple. A small amount of transparencies and negatives conclude the collection, which were used for the planning of some of Margolies books. It is important to note that this collection does not contain John Margolies original photography, except for the few postcards that advertise his exhibits.

John McShain (1898-1989) was a Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.,-based building contractor, whose firm, John McShain, Inc., was by 1950 the fiftieth largest construction firm in the United States, with contracts in excess of $100,000,000. John McShain's personal and business papers document his business career, the construction industry, and his investments in hotels, car dealerships, parking garages, transit lines, and racehorses.

John McShain (1898-1989) was a Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.-based building contractor, whose firm, John McShain, Inc., was by 1950 the fifth largest construction firm in the United States. The collection contains graphic materials documenting John McShain's family life and personal interests, his career as a building contractor, and his involvement in horse racing.

Advertising, both print and radio, developed as a prominent industry in the early decades of the twentieth century as popular magazine circulation exploded and the radio became ubiquitous in American households. This collection consists of digital access copies of publications, including employee magazines, and magazine advertisements for radios and other related household electronics dating from 1912 to 1980.

John Oscar Skiles (1895-1960) was a longtime employee of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, where he worked as an analyst in the Metallurgical Department of the company's Sparrows Point, Maryland, plant, beginning in the 1920s until his retirement in 1960. This small collection consists of one folder of materials related to Skiles' employment at Bethlehem Steel.

His business records consist of four time and board books and one day book from the Greenwood Iron Works and a single day book from the District Forge.

John Potts (1760-1809) was a Pennsylvania businessman and member of the Potts family of ironmasters. This collection documents copper and iron ore mining and land speculation in Pennsylvania and Virginia by John Potts Jr. between 1767 and 1830. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence between Potts and his brother-in-law, Robert E. Hobart (1768-1826). It describes the initial operation of the Keeptryst Furnace and the operations of the Copper Mine Company of Pennsylvania.

John Raven Johnson (1900-1988) was a professor of chemistry at Cornell University from 1930 until his retirement in 1965. He also served as a consultant to E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company from 1937 until 1951, where he worked for the Organic Chemicals Department. Wallace Hume Carothers (1896-1937) was a chemist and inventor of Neoprene artificial rubber and Nylon synthetic fiber. He worked as a chemist in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Fundamental Research Program from 1928 until his death in 1937. This collection consists of correspondence between Johnson and Carothers, who were close friends as well as colleagues. The letters are both professional and personal in nature. Several letters discuss laboratory research work in polymer chemistry and the role of the catalyst.

John T. Houlihan (1944-) is an industrial designer who worked for General Motors, SCM Corporation, General Electric, South Bend Toy, and Timex. His papers consist of sketches, drawings, and renderings from those companies, spanning nearly forty years.

John Trageser Steam Copper Works manufactured galvanized and copper range boilers, expansion tanks, hot water tanks, as well as; sinks, drainboards and bathtubs. This item is a page (March 1926) from a calendar of the John Trageser Steam Copper Works of New York. A humorous color illustration by Tony Sarg shows four men golfers "Limbering up at the first tee."

John W. Macklem (1867-1948) began working for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company as an errand boy at a young age and remained with the company his entire career. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. This collection comprises photographs of buildings and scenes in DuPont Company explosives manufacturing plants along the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware, including the Eleutherian Mills (or Upper) yard, the Upper Hagley yard, and the Lower Hagley yard.

In 1875, Philadelphia merchant, John Wanamaker, bought a freight railroad depot at 13th and Market Streets and made it Philadelphia’s first department store. In 1909, Wanamaker bought a huge pipe organ and installed it in Grand Court of the new building. Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet (1872-1967) was a French painter and medallic artist. This collection is a folded momento with of a reproduction of "Adoration of the Magi" triptych painted by O. D. V. Guillonnet which was exhibited in the Organ Loft, Grand Court of the John Wanamaker store, Philadelphia.

John Watson (1774-1864), a Quaker, worked as a land surveyor in Pennsylvania during the early nineteenth century. The collection consists of five volumes relating to the construction of the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal.

John Zimmermann & Sons, Inc. was a manufacturer of upholstery fabrics in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for more than fifty years. This collection consists primarily of financial records from the company's founding through its sale to Merion Securities, Inc. It contains rich payroll and pension data of potential interest to labor historians. The collection also contains records from Zimmermann Mills, Inc. and J-Z, Inc., a division of Merion Securities. These materials are also primarily financial in nature.

Jonathan H. Klein (1949-) spent his professional career as a specialist in passenger railroad and rail transit equipment economics. The papers consist of a small sample of reports and memoranda written or collected by Klein in his role as a manager in charge of rail passenger equipment procurement, performance and maintenance. The agencies represented are SEPTA, Chicago Transit Authority, BART, LAMTA and Amtrak.

The Jones Brokerage Company was a food brokerage business founded by Otis V. Jones Jr. (1915-2003) in 1946, as Associated Foods in Raleigh, North Carolina. This small collection contains samples of packaging for bread, coffee, desserts, produce, meats, sausages, and salt.

Joseph A. Speel (1810?-1891) was a bookbinder in Philadelphia. This advertisement shows an interior view of the bindery printed in at least two colors with hand tinting.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company began operation in 1831 as a cotton cloth manufacturer in Rockford, Delaware. After the Civil War, the company concentrated on finishing cotton cloth. In later years it became famous for its Ban-lon artificial fiber but eventually withdrew from manufacturing in favor of licensing its processes and trademarks to other companies. The records consist of miscellaneous correspondence and reports, possibly from W. Ralph MacIntyre (1897-1984), president. The records include research reports and notebooks on dyeing, bleaching, printing, and finishing of fabrics.

Joseph Bancroft, an Englishman trained in textile weaving in Lancashire, established his own cotton mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington, Delaware in 1831. This operation became the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company in 1889, and in 1929 it absorbed the Eddystone Manufacturing Co. These images include plant exteriors and interiors, officials and employees, aerials, workers' housing, machinery, floods, and dams and races on Brandywine Creek as well as many Ban-Lon and Miss America fashion photographs. This collection includes approximately 1060 images covering a period from the late 19th century to the 1960s.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety cotton-made goods. In July of 1958, The Spunize Company of America filed a lawsuit against one of Bancroft's licensees, the Duplan Corporation. The Spunize Company alleged that Duplan Corp. had committed patent infringement of a yarn crimping process that Duplan licensed from Bancroft. This collection consists of photographs and motion picture film depicting the yarn crimping process and the crimped yarn. A majority of the materials were created with the intention of being submitted as evidence in the court case.

Joseph Bancroft (1803-1874), an Englishman trained in textile weaving in Lancashire, established his own cotton mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington in 1831. The operation became the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company in 1889. The photographs consist of images related to the Joseph Bancroft & Sons textile mills in the Rockford and, later, Kentmere areas on the banks of the Brandywine River. These images include plant exteriors and interiors, officials and employees, aerials, workers' housing, machinery, floods, and dams and races on Brandywine Creek.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety cotton-made goods. A panoramic view of Bancroft Mills in Wilmington, Delaware.

A small sample of engineering sketch sheets from a large Wilmington, Delaware, cotton textile and textile finishing firm.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company began operation in 1831 as a cotton cloth manufacturer in Rockford, Delaware. After the Civil War the company concentrated on finishing cotton cloth. In later years it became famous for its Ban-lon artificial fiber but eventually withdrew from manufacturing in favor of licensing its processes and trademarks to other companies. This portion of the Bancroft records documents Bancroft's efforts to license and defend the Ban-lon, Everglaze and other trademarks in the United States, the British Commonwealth, Europe, Japan, and Latin America.

The records consist of a small batch of company documents preserved by an individual after the end of operations by the Wilmington Finishing Company. They include copies of the company's charter and supplements, bylaws and amendments, and files of agreements covering water rights, easements for sewer, gas and water lines, and plant access for the Wilmington and Northern Railroad Company.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company began operation in 1831 as a cotton cloth manufacturer in Rockford, Delaware. After the American Civil War, the company concentrated on finishing cotton cloth, purchasing the Kentmere Mills adjoining their original site in 1895 and a third plant for manufacturing at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1910. The company acquired another textile firm, the Eddystone Manufacturing Company, in 1925. This collection comprises records from both the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company and the Eddystone Manufacturing Company, along with records from several predecessors and subsidiaries. The Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company records trace the firm's history from 1831 through 1961, with the Managing Director's letter books, in particular, giving a very detailed picture of the company's operations. The records of the Eddystone Manufacturing Company and its predecessors are relatively complete and offer a good picture of a medium-sized textile firm that was typical of the mid-Atlantic states.

Joseph Dugan (1766-1845) was a Philadelphia merchant of the early nineteenth century. The collection is a receipt book of Dugan's household expenses, including fuel (cordwood), specialty foodstuffs such as wine, and furniture.

Joseph H. Hanson (1820-1858) was a farmer in St. Georges Hundred near Delaware City, Delaware. The volume is a combined ledger and memorandum book covering the operation of Hanson's farm and the employment of tenants and/or farm laborers. There are pages for the accounts of individuals employed, mostly boys and young white men but also some women and some African Americans, with lists of chores performed.

Joseph Horn (1861-1941) and Frank Hardart (1850-1918) founded Horn & Hardart, a food service company, in 1888. In 1902, Horn and Hardart opened their first Automat in Philadelphia. The first New York City Automat opened in 1912, and other locations followed in both cities. The Automat became a huge success in Philadelphia and New York City, daily serving hundreds of thousands of people in its heyday. This item is a framed portrait photograph of Joseph Horn from around the 1930s.

Joseph Lawrence Kochka (1892-1952) and Mary Murray Kochka (1893-1984) were high school teachers in the Washington, D.C., area from the 1920s through the 1940s. Mary Kochka continued teaching through the 1950s. The couple was married in 1926. This collection consists of a travelogue photograph album detailing the Kochkas' two-week tour through Syracuse and Palmyra, New York, with Holman Rides Inc., an outdoor amusement ride and carnival business, in August 1950. The Kochkas were hosted by company owners Lucy Holman Sprague (1894-1954) and Leonard "Speed" Sprague (1902-1970). There are images of the Spragues' home, their neighbors' homes, ride erection/disassembly crews, ticket booths, crew quarters, transport trucks, and views of the fairgrounds. Rides pictured include the Tilt-a-Whirl, Merry-go-Round, Ferris Wheel, and Baby Tug. Lucy and Speed Holman are often seen along with their dog, Dundee. Most images have extensive captions.

Joseph Lincoln Gillson (1895-1964) was the chief geologist for the DuPont Company's Development Department from 1929 to 1960. As chief geologist he traveled all over the world making explorations in search of sulfur, ilmenite, fluorspar, barytes, celestite, and other raw materials, as well as conducting investigations in search of ground water supplies, foundations, and general site studies. This is a small collection that consists of a set of notebooks and related documents from Gillson's time working for the DuPont Company, as well as a set of papers and related documents from consulting projects he did during his retirement.

Joseph N. Borglin (1899-1976) was a chemical engineer in the Agricultural Chemicals Division at Hercules Powder Company. The records include typescripts for two works by Borglin: "Treatise on Vinsol Resin" and "Treatise on Rosin" both from the 1940s.

Joseph P. Hornor (1785-1845) was a merchant in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century. The collection is comprised of a letter book of Hornor's outbound letters, describing mercantile business spreading throughout the Philadelphia hinterlands.

Joseph M. Rule (1922-2017) was a chemist and industrial marketing analyst in the Marketing Research Division of the Development Department at the DuPont Company. Later he became senior community affairs consultant in the Public Affairs Department. This small collection consists of materials from Rule's work for the Marketing Research Department. The materials include market research reports, DuPont Elastomers architectural files, and advertisements.