Finding Aids

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, the company shifted its focus away from gunpowder production and towards chemistry innovations. This item is the Spanish language version of "Wonder World of Chemistry" which shows chemical products produced by the DuPont Company.

Lavinia Dimmick (1874-1946) was a descendant of the founders of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, a chemical research and manufacturing company. She was the daughter of Irene du Pont (1845-1877) and Edward Dimmick (1843-1895). Alfred Rée (1864-1933) was a chemist in England. This collection primarily consists of letters that passed between Alfred and Lavinia Rée during their courtship, ending with notes on their wedding reception, honeymoon travel and return to England.

Lavinia Dimmick Rée (1874-1946) was a descendant of the founders of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, a chemical research and manufacturing company. She was the daughter of Irene du Pont (1845-1877) and Edward Dimmick (1843-1895), and a great-niece of Sophie M. du Pont (1810-1888). The records consist of two copies of a typewritten transcription of "Memories of Aunt Sophie" written by Rée about du Pont's home, Lower Louviers, during the late 1870s and 1880s.

The Lawrance Engineering and Research Corporation manufactured auxiliary power plants for airplanes. The firm was founded in 1930 in Linden, New Jersey, by aviator Charles L. Lawrance (1882-1950). This small collection of blueprints shows auxiliary power plant equipment.

The Lea family was among the largest flour mill operators at the Brandywine Falls, near Wilmington, Delaware, since the 1770s, when Thomas Lea (1757–1823) joined in partnership with Joseph Tatnall (1740–1813) to operate mills on the north bank of the stream. This small collection of Lea family papers documents Delaware and Pennsylvania land use and ownership, elite family and social relationships, and agricultural business operations from the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The materials are from four generations of the William Lea (1805-1876) family lineage. The collection is arranged into four series: Real estate and financial papers, Correspondence, Personal papers, and Newspaper clippings.

Thomas Lea (1757–1823) joined in partnership with Joseph Tatnall (1740–1813), and passed on the Tatnall-Lea grain mills in Wilmington, Delaware to his son William Lea (1805-1876), who took over operation of the mills in 1837. In 1864, William Lea brought his sons Henry Lea (1839-1888) and Preston Lea (1841-1916) into the firm, changing the name to William Lea & Sons Company. This collection includes portraits of members of the Lea and related families. These include such family names as Tatnall, Warner, Preston, Ferris, Downing, Spruance, Lovett, Moore, Bush, Ely, and others.

This reproduction (copied from an original cabinet card) is of Lea Pusey (1820-1896) photographed through a large block of clear ice. Pusey created the plate process, a method to make commercial ice and was the founder of Diamond Ice Company.

This collection contains photographs of the LeCarpentier, Green and Baker families who were farmers and merchants in the Delaware valley area. The majority of the collection consists of formal portraits of family members, a small number of which are identified, as well as views of various locations around Wilmington, Delaware.

The Leeds & Northrup Company traces its origins to Morris E. Leeds & Company, established by Morris E. Leeds (1869-1952) in 1899 to develop and manufacture precision instruments. Their records consists of minutes from the Development and Executive Committes and the Cooperative Association.

The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a major anthracite mining and transporting firm in eastern Pennsylvania between 1822 and 1954. This collection consists of one outbound letterpress copybook dating from 1844 to 1848 of Edwin A. Douglas (1805-1859), Chief Engineer & Superintendent; three outbound letterbooks of William Reed, Chief Clerk at Mauch Chunk, dating from 1852 to 1859; thirteen outbound letterbooks of George Ruddle (1828-1904), Chief Clerk, Treasurer, and Real Estate Agent, dating from 1860 to 1878; and four inbound letterbooks of George Ruddle dating from 1870 to 1874. The letterbooks contain the correspondence of some of the chief field officers at Mauch Chunk, much of it regular exchanges with the officers at the Philadelphia headquarters.

Lehigh Coal Mine Company was an unincorporated joint-stock company, established in 1792, with the intention of developing a deposit of anthracite coal discovered by Jacob Weiss (1750-1839) and others at what is now Summit Hill in Carbon County, Pennsylvania. The collection consists of documents relating to land ownership and governance of Lehigh Coal Mine Company.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company was one of the major anthracite railroads and formed a secondary trunk line between Jersey City, New Jersey and Buffalo, New York. Their records consist of minute books, corporate histories, voluntary reorganization plans, and an illustrated brochure on Claremont Terminal.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad company in the northeastern United States primarily used to haul anthracite coal from Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pennsylvania, to Easton, Pennsylvania. This collection consists of twenty-two glass negatives and one box. Most photographs depict the rolling stock of Lehigh Valley Railroad dating to approximately some point between 1934 and 1948, based on engine numbers.

Leonard W. Walton (1911-2005) was a printing industry executive with Milprint, Inc., which specialized in printing packaging materials, between 1936 and 1976. This collection of photographs related to Milprint, Inc was collected by Leonard W. Walton. A majority of the photographs show Milprint employees attending events, banquets, and dinners, including Quarter Century Club celebrations.

Leonard W. Walton (1911-2005) was a printing industry executive with Milprint, Inc., which specialized in printing packaging materials, between 1936 and 1976. His collection of Milprint records primarily consists of printing samples including candy wrappers, cigarette boxes, potato chip and bread bags and bacon boxes.

Lepley & Joswick Photographers was a commercial photographic studio in Chicago, Illinois, between 1946 and 1952. The firm was a partnership between Alden D. Lepley (1911-2003) and Gerald "Jerry" J. Joswick (1923-1990). In 1946, Lepley and Joswick opened a photography studio at 5121 W. Devon Ave. in Chicago. Their clients were mainly industrial ones. Both partners continued to pursue side projects and give lectures separately. This small collection of photographs features a range of commercial images depicting different areas of industry in Chicago between 1940 and 1952. It includes food factory assembly line workers, canned and boxed food products, home appliances and electronics, and interior home designs.

Leroy Nelson Houck (1895-1980) was an electrician with the Pennsylvania Water & Power Company. He spent a large portion of his career working in the Load Dispatcher's Office. Pennsylvania Water & Power Company was established to store, transport, and generate water power for both commercial and manufacturing purposes. The Holtwood facility outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was the first power plant to have both a hydroelectric generator and a coal power generator. This small collection consists of pamphlets, photographs, and booklets related to the Pennsylvania Water & Power Co. documenting Houck's experiences as an employee there. There are manuals, booklets, and brochures about Holtwood and the Safe Harbor Dam.

Levi C. Stang (1890-1962) was an electrical engineer and general manager of several electric companies throughout the Midwest. His scrapbook chronicles his career and employment as an electrical engineer through selected letters and correspondence, newspaper and other clippings, blueprints, and photographs.

Brothers Louis Edward Levy (1846-1919) and Max Levy (1857-1926) founded a photoengraving business in Baltimore in 1875. In 1877, they moved to Philadelphia and reorganized the firm as the Levytype Company. Here they introduced their invention (jointly patented on January 4, 1875) of a new photochemical engraving process, which they called "Levy-type." The bulk of the papers consists of incoming correspondence relating to orders and shipments from 1895 to 1920, and includes letters from all parts of the United States, Europe (especially England and Germany), and more distant places such as India, Australia, and Chile.

Leroy Greenwood "L.G." Jackson (1889-1981) was a chemist for E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company between 1911 and 1954. Jackson's small set of papers are primarily from his work related to gunpowder. This collection would be of interest to those interested in powder production. There are also two items from Jackson's time in rayon research.

A match cover or a matchbook cover is a thin piece of cardboard that is folded around a set of match sticks. Chemist, John Walker (1781-1859) invented the match stick in 1827. Joshua Pusey (1842-1906?), an inventor and attorney patented matchbook covers in 1892. Within a short time hotels, restaurants, airlines, and all kinds of stores began advertising using matchbook covers. This is a small collection of matchbook covers from hotels, museums and restaurants. Most the businesses represented are from Las Vegas, Nevada, there are a few from other places in the United States.

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) became a giant in the field of electronic data processing by the mid-1950s after having achieved great success in the punch-card tabulating machine business in the 1930s. This is a sales film for IBM about the history of information technology.

Lippincott & Margulies, Inc., and its successor Lippincott Mercer is a major international design consultancy specializing in corporate identity, image, and marketing. The records consist of a set of the company's magazine, Design Sense.

The account books document a general store situated in Little Britain Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, likely owned in part by Jeremiah Brown (1749-1831). Brown was a successful businessman, owning a grist mill, sawmill, and slate quarries. The general store was a major center of exchange, which included a mix of cash and barter transactions, the latter including both goods and labor.

The Link-Belt Company was founded by William Dana Ewart (1851-1908), who had invented the detachable link-belt in 1874. The flexible metal belt provided a superior system of power transmission and was first used widely in farm machinery. This item is a booklet of cyanotype photographs of locomotive coaling stations designed, erected, and equipped by the Link-Belt Engineering Company.

This collection consists of glass plate negatives and photographic copy prints which were made directly from the negatives. The images document an array of subjects, though the majority of the images are of locomotives, railroad cars, railroad stations, and other railroad infrastructure. Various landscape and cityscape photographs are also included. Where it is possible to identify the locations, the majority of images document sites in Pennsylvania, though photographs of sites in New York state and Ontario are also present.

Lois Kathryn Herr (1941-) joined Bell Laboratories in 1964, and, during her twenty-six-year career with Bell and AT&T, she was a prominent advocate for women's rights in the workplace. The collection supplements the corresponding manuscript collection and primarily comprises material Lois Herr gathered as source material for her book Women, Power, and AT&T: Winning Rights in the Work Place. It also includes audio recordings of some of Herr's public appearances and other materials concerning Herr's involvement with the National Organization for Women (NOW) and efforts to challenge discriminatory attitudes and practices toward women in the workplace.

Lois K. Herr (1941-) was a prominent advocate of equal rights for women in the workplace and a party to an important legal victory securing greater equity for women in AT&T's Bell System in the early 1970s. The collection documents her role as an important campaigner for women's rights in the business world and her interest in her predecessors in the suffragist and feminist movements of the early twentieth century.

Longwood Gardens is a series of formal display gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania that was developed by Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954) after he purchased the site from the Peirce family in 1906. The collection includes two 1925 blueprints for two of the three bungalows that were built at Longwood.

Longwood Gardens is a series of formal display gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, that was developed by Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954) after he purchased the site from the Peirce family in 1906. In 1921 he constructed an extensive network of conservatories which contained plantings from many locales, including species from Africa and South America. This collection consists of two homemade stereographs showing different interior views of the conservatory.

Louis Albert Cazenove (1807-1852) was a merchant at the firm Cazenove & Co. in Alexandria, Virigina. This journal is the first volume of Cazenove's European tour in 1829 and 1830; the second volume is missing. The entries are very descriptive. There is also a list of names at the end of the volume, some of which may have been business customers of Cazenove's father.

The brothers Louis Edward Levy (1846-1919) and Max Levy (1857-1926) founded a photoengraving business in Baltimore in 1875. In 1877 they moved to Philadelphia and reorganized the firm as the Levytype Company. Here they introduced their invention (jointly patented on January 4, 1875) of a new photochemical engraving process, which they called "Levy-type". This album contains personal cyanotype photographs of their homes, travels, friends and family.

This collection contains papers from Louis F. Moose from his early days as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, to his retirement from Bell Laboratories, Allentown, Pennsylvania, as an electrical engineer and department head. They date from 1928 with the bulk of the documents from 1942 to 1982 covering his work and activities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bell Laboratories.

Throughout his career, Mr. Moose was involved with the early research and development of magnetrons/microwave tubes used in radar for military use and for Bell Systems applications.

Louis Forman (1908-2002) was a liquor broker who managed the creation and distribution of several different liquor and whiskey brands, including Michter’s. The collection, which focuses on the development and marketing of Michter’s whiskey, with a secondary emphasis on Forman’s liquor brokering business, primarily consists of advertising campaign materials and artwork, business plans and forecasts, deeds, contracts, information on brewing and distilling processes, union contracts, testimonial letters, and other correspondence.

Louis Forman (1908-2002) was a liquor broker who managed the creation and distribution of several different liquor and whiskey brands, including Michter’s. This collection documents the operations of Mitcher's Distillery in Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania as well as Forman's efforts to import Kotobukiya Kabushiki Kaisha Japanese whiskies and wines to the United States.

Louis Labadie "L.L." Driggs (1868-1942) was a weapons manufacturer, who, along with his brother, U.S. Navy Commander William Hale "W.H." Driggs (1847-1908), and fellow Navy officer Samuel Seabury (?-1902) founded Driggs-Seabury Ordnance Company in 1897. This item is a typewritten speech given by L.L. Driggs, likely to the New York Yacht Club, promoting a semi-automatic gun invented by W.H. Driggs.

Louis R. Wonderly (1931-) worked in the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company Secretary's Department for thirty years. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. This small collection of Louis Wonderly's papers provides a glimpse into the secretary's work at the DuPont Company. It would be of interest to those researching the DuPont Company's upper-level management and operations from the 1920s through the 1970s.

Louis T. Klauder and Associates (LTK) is a professional rail transportation engineering consulting firm. LTK were hired to work as consulting engineers for a joint project of the United States Department of Transportation and Pennsylvania Railroad called the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project. This collection contains aerial photographs of the Northeast Corridor railroad route from New York to Boston taken between 1951 and 1965. These images were used to aid in the project. These aerial photographs make up a bulk of the collection. There are several sets of images that show train station exteriors along several routes on the Northeast Corridor. Thirty-eight photographs show the projects test track at Pueblo Army Depot in Colorado. There are four press photographs for Inflight Motion Pictures Inc. and a few renderings of proposed trains.

Founded in 1921, the Philadelphia firm of Louis T. Klauder and Associates specializes in the design and evaluation of railroad and rail transit systems, including equipment, infrastructure and operations. Their collection consists of selected job files covering Klauder's work for the Federal Office of High Speed Ground Transportation in developing the first U.S. high-speed rail project in the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The collection also includes smaller job files on tangential rail projects and a series of files Robert B. Watson, former Northeast Corridor project coordinator for the Pennsylvania and Penn Central Railroads, brought with him when he joined Klauder in 1972.

Louise du Pont Crowninshield (1877-1958) was an early leader in the field of historic preservation and a collector of antiques and hooked rugs. This collection includes two letters addressed to Nell (McCall) Pringle (1879-1937), of Charleston, South Carolina.

Louise du Pont Crowninshield (1877-1958) was an early leader in the field of historic preservation and a collector of antiques and hooked rugs. The collection includes her papers as well as those of her husband Francis Boardman Crowninshield, her mother, and other family members.

Louise Evelina du Pont (1877-1958) was an heiress and preservationist, who was the great granddaughter of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771–1834), the founder of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. She was the last du Pont to live on the Eleutherian Mills estate. This collection consists of photographic and graphic materials primarily of Crowninshield's extended du Pont family and friends. The collection has been organized into four series: Family portraits, Travel photographs, Residences, and Mary Pauline Foster du Pont sketches and collection of travel souveniers.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition or the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 as it was popularly called, was put on to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. Three postcards show buildings from the exposition.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition or the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 as it was popularly called, was put on to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. Seven stereoviews show scenes from the fair.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition or the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 as it was popularly called, was put on to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. Exhibitions covered achievements in the fine arts, science, technology, manufacturing, agriculture, government, and education. This souvenir viewbook shows buildings at the fair and is accordion folded and in color.

Gertrude Ruhnka (1891-1981) was a research librarian at the Huntington Library in California. The collection contains her unpublished manuscript, "Love for life: a self-portrait of the first three generations of du Ponts in America, 1791-1834," and two letters from Ruhnka to J.B. Lippincott Company and Dr. Walter J. Heacock of the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation.

Dr. Lucius F. Ellsworth (1941-) was a Hagley graduate fellow and was employed by Hagley as a research assistant in the history of technology from 1963 to 1967. The papers in this collection consist of a combination of research notes and original documents collected by Dr. Ellsworth during his research on the American tanning and leather industries.

The Lukens Steel Company was a medium-sized, non-integrated steel company and one of the top three producers of steel plates in the United States. Lukens operated continuously at its Coatesville, Pennsylvania, site since 1810 and was one of the few successful survivors of the many nineteenth-century iron works that once dotted southeastern Pennsylvania. This collection of Lukens Steel Company records consists of corporate records, mostly from the Secretary's Office. The records are comprised of seven series: Shareholders' meeting agendas; Stockholder lists; Proxies for annual meetings; Board and committee meeting agendas; Financial statements; Secretary's correspondence; and Counsel's correspondence.

The Lukens Steel Company was a medium-sized, non-integrated steel company and one of the top three producers of steel plates in the United States. Lukens operated continuously at its Coatesville, Pennsylvania, site from 1810, and was one of the few successful survivors of the many nineteenth-century ironworks that once dotted southeastern Pennsylvania. This collection consists of three volumes of logbooks from the Lukens Steel Navy Armor building in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

Lukens Steel Company was a medium-sized producer of specialty steel products and one of the top three U.S. producers of steel plate. The Lukens Steel Company records documents all aspects of the business from the early nineteenth century through the 1970s.