Finding Aids

In the spring of 1934 the Senate's Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry chaired by Senator Gerald P. Nye (1892-1971) began to examine the role that the munitions manufacturers had played during the First World War. This collection consists of photographs of P. S. du Pont, Irénée du Pont, Lammot du Pont, and A. Felix du Pont testifying before the Nye Committee in September of 1934.

John R. McGrath (1923-2002) was a patent attorney who worked for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company for most of his career. McGrath worked primarily on nylon and its products. This collection consists of a notebook McGrath assembled and titled "Collection of Nylon Art," containing all of the nylon patents of the DuPont Company that he could find.

J. Edward Norton (1925-2009) worked for the DuPont Company in the Textile Fibers Department as a technical marketing specialist. The notebook he maintained includes company technical memoranda and bulletins covering the processing of Nylon, Orlon, and Dacron, the production of wool-polyester blends, and the carding, spinning, knitting, and finishing of artificial fibers.

Richard Hunt Brown (1903-1978) was an engineer and president of Automation Consultants, Inc., a firm that provided a subscription updating service for monthly newsletters, with pages containing reviews and descriptions, prices, and images of new equipment and appliances. This collection consists of five volumes of "Office Automation: Integrated and Electronic Data Processing," published in 1955 with updated content provided as newsletters/supplements between 1955 and 1960.

The office of Alien Property Custodian was created by the Trading with the Enemy Act of October 6, 1917. According to the act, the right to seize enemy property was vested in the president, which was then delegated to the Alien Property Custodian. This collection consists of nine volumes, fifty-eight booklets, and foldouts concerning U.S. patents vested in the Alien Property Custodian (1943-1946). The materials specifically deal with mechanical and electrical patents, as well as chemical patents.

Old Swedes Church (now known as Holy Trinity Church) was dedicated on July 4, 1699 in Wilmington, Delaware, built for the Swedish colony that settled there. One exterior view of Old Swedes Church in Wilmington, Delaware, showing the portico, steeple, and grave yard.

Oliver Evans (1755-1819) was a Delaware-born inventor who pioneered the high-pressure steam engine and created the first continuous production line. The collection consists of documents assembled by C. Walter Mortenson's (1915-1996) campaign to have Evans inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Oliver M. Hayden (1893-1991) was a chemist who specialized in rubber and worked for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company as manager of the laboratory where he was part of the team that developed Neoprene. His papers document his work on the Neoprene project, the activities of the Rubber Chemicals Division, and a draft of an oral history interview.

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.

William "André" Harvey (1941-) is an American sculptor and artist primarily known for finely detailed realistic bronze casting, in particular, animals. He also works in stone, casts sculptural jewelry in gold, watercolors, photography, and creates collages. He is a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society. His wife and business partner, Roberta Rush "Bobbie" Harvey (1941-), manages the Harveys’ sculpture gallery and art business, maintaining client lists and provenance records, managing sales and exhibition loans, and promoting André’s work. In this interview, André and Bobbie Harvey discuss the training, experiences, and travels that led them to the art world, the sculpture business they built together beginning in the 1970s, and the process of bringing a piece of art into the world, from conception to execution to exhibition to sale. They also reflect on the cultural and historical conditions that influenced their decision to pursue careers in art, and the personal and mutual satisfactions of following artistic passion and cultivating community connections.

Frederick Orthlieb (1945?-) is a mechanical engineer, professor, and tradesperson who has rehabilitated, upgraded, and modernized historical telescopes. While the telescopes are obsolete for current research work, after rehabilitation they are capable of productive and effective use for familiarization, secondary and higher education, and institutional and public outreach. In this interview, Orthlieb talks about his career and work refurbishing telescopes.

James Cortada (1946-) is a management consultant and business historian. In this interview, Cortada discusses the collection of computing history books that he donated to Hagley Library.

Kenneth M. White (1923-2020) was an industrial designer who formed his own design firm in 1947 called Ken White Associates, Inc., which developed plans and designs for thousands of independent and academic bookstores throughout the United States, as well as many other types of retail businesses. This collection is a two-part interview in which Ken White discusses the early parts of his life and career as an industrial designer.

Marshall B. Johnson (1938-) is an industrial designer who worked for some of the most well-known small appliance companies and designed many popular consumer products, as well as often doing their graphic and packaging design. This is an interview with Marshall Johnson in which he talks about his life and career as an industrial designer.

Over half the mushrooms in the United States are grown in and around the town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, which proudly calls itself the mushroom capital of the world. This oral history collection brings together interviews with individuals whose experiences capture the many different kinds of work and knowledge involved in mushroom cultivation, harvesting, packing, distribution, and marketing, and how those processes have changed over time.

Wallace Hume Carothers (1896-1937) was 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 contains five interviews conducted in July and August of 1978 with Wallace Carothers’s friends and colleagues. The interviewees primarily share stories and focus on their feelings surrounding Carothers’s personality, work, and suicide.

This oral history project was initiated to provide supplementary material for Hagley’s 2015 exhibit, Driving Desire, that feature items from the Z. Taylor Vinson Transportation Collection. The three interviewees are; Rick Shnitzler, Fred Simeone, and Yann Saunders, all were personal acquaintances of Z. Taylor Vinson as well as highly involved in either collecting or dealing auto ephemera and/or automobiles.

The Textile Fibers Department of the DuPont Company was established in 1936 as the Rayon Department, which specialized in researching and developing synthetic fibers for fabrics such as Nylon, Orlon, Dacron, and Lycra. The collection consists of oral history interviews conducted by Joseph Plasky, with former employees of DuPont's Textile Fibers department.

John Raskob (1879-1950) was a financial executive for the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., General Motors, and financier of the Empire State Building. During the 1920s Raskob became active in Democratic Party politics and from 1928 to 1932 served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He was an important financial backer of Governor Alfred E. Smith (1873-1944) when he ran for president in 1928. This collection consists of seven oral history interviews conducted between 2004 and 2005 with members of John J. Raskob’s immediate family, primarily his children and grandchildren. The interviews are largely personal in nature and often focus on family relationships.

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. The records include the handwritten transcripts of a series of interviews with persons who knew and worked with Carothers, conducted in 1978 and 1979. The interviews were conducted by Adeline Bassett Cook Strange (1917-2004), a teacher, researcher, and volunteer who spent her life dedicated to various charitable projects around Wilmington, Delaware.

Commercial art, or advertising art, is art created for an enterprise to communicate reasons to buy goods and services, to create a recognizable logo, or to detail the correct performance of a task. This album consists of examples of original commercial art including lettering, letterheads, labels, a postcard, point-of-sale advertising, newspaper advertising, sketches of people, color separation examples, and a drawing of tableware.

Commercial art, or advertising art, is art created for an enterprise to communicate reasons to buy goods and services, to create a recognizable logo, or to detail the correct performance of a task. The collection consists of original drawings, sketches, and paintings for unidentified cosmetic, powder, and perfume packaging.

The firm of Orrick, Grubbs & Parker, iron merchants, was formed in Philadelphia around 1839, succeeding the firm of Samuel D. Orrick & Co. The records consist of 26 letters addressed to Orrick & Fox, Samuel D. Orrick & Co., Orrick, Grubbs & Parker and E. B. & C. B. Grubb concerning shipments of iron from the Grubb furnaces and its resale to manufacturers along the east coast.

The Otis Elevator Company manufactures, installs and maintains elevators, escalators and moving walkways. Elisha Otis (1811-1861) founded the company in 1853 in New York. This collection consists of thirteen tear sheets of advertisements with sketched illustrations for Otis Elevator Company elevators (8) and escalators (5). The escalators are shown in five different styles for department stores installations.

The Otis Elevator Company manufactures, installs and maintains elevators, escalators and moving walkways. In 1904, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, a precursor of today’s London Underground, purchased 170 electric elevators from the company, to be installed between 1905 and 1907. The album contains images of elevators and elevator equipment being installed at subway stations in London. The photographs are labeled by station and date. Most of the images show the equipment used to raise, lower and brake the elevator, often already installed at the top of the elevator shaft or in a machine room.

The DuPont Company began with the manufacture of gunpowder, and particularly from about 1890 to 1930, commissioned many illustrations in oil and watercolor for advertising purposes. This collection consists of a set of eighteen color prints entitled "Our American Game Birds" from paintings by Lynn Bogue Hunt, published by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc. - Sporting Powder Division. Each print has a written description on its reverse, by Edward Howe Forbush. As the set's title suggests, various game birds are the subjects of each print.

Owl Drug Company was a chain of apothecary retail stores that sold drugs and patent medicines at a reduced cost. The company also sold candy, soda, Kodak film, stationery, cosmetics, perfumes, and other toiletries. The first store opened in June 1892 at 1128 Market Street, San Francisco, California, advertised as the "Drug Palace of the Pacific Coast." The album consists of images of displays of items sold in the drug store, specifically the 5th and Broadway location in Los Angeles, which opened for business on January 2, 1904. The 5th and Broadway location was the fifth store of the company. The photographs are countertop and shop window merchandise displays. A few images consist of print advertisements and operational charts.

The Oxford Furnace in Warren County, New Jersey, was one of the oldest blast-furnaces in the state. The records consist of two drafts in ozalid copy of a typescript collection of letters and articles on the history of Oxford Furnace.

Peter Arnold Karthaus (1765-1840) established a mercantile business in Baltimore trading with Germany, Holland, France, and the Caribbean. The receipt book was kept by a member of P.A. Karthaus & Company at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and mostly deals with payments to individuals, pilots, and other laborers, engaged in Karthaus's arking business, typically wages, meals, boarding costs, and transportation back upstream.

Pamela Cunningham Copeland (1906-2001) and Lammot du Pont Copeland (1905-1983) were active in the land conservation movement, cultural institutions (including both the Hagley and Winterthur Museums), and local civic and philanthropic work. The collection contains photographs of Pamela and Lammot du Pont Copeland and family members. Many of the pictures document the couple's various activities and philanthropic endeavors.

The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair held in Buffalo, New York from May 1 to November 2, 1901. This collection is a letter from Katherine M. (Hunting) Fuller (1869-1958) to her daughter, Muriel H. Fuller (1892-1976), about the exposition and Niagara Falls.

The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair held in Buffalo, New York, from May 1 to November 2, 1901. This item is a souvenir paper fan showing a bird's eye view of the Fair on the front, and the back shows a map of the grounds.

The item is a small novelty souvenir viewbook from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It opens up to display fifteen attached, folded halftone photographic views of the San Francisco area. The exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco for nine months in 1915. The official reason for it was to commemorate the completion of the Panama Canal. It also furnished a platform to showcase a revitalized San Francisco that had been devastated by the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906.

Paris T. Carlisle (circa 1802-1871) owned a general store in Frederica, Delaware during the early to mid-1800s. This small collection includes Paris T. Calisle's day book for his general store in Frederica, Delaware, as well as a Stock Book ledger recording wages and the state of stocks of brass, copper, and iron wire in the mid 1800s.

Parry Norling (1939-) was a career research chemist and manager with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. This small collection consists of DuPont Company-related videotapes and slides accumulated by Parry Norling while in his role as Planning Director at DuPont's Central Research and Development during the 1990s.

Parry Norling (1939-) was a career research chemist and manager with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. Records consists of company documents and outside publications collected by Norling during his time at DuPont.

Patent medicines, also known as proprietary medicines, are non-prescription medicinal remedies that are trademarked and whose ingredients have been granted protection for exclusivity. The term "patent medicine" has become particularly associated with drug compounds manufactured during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In actuality, the patent medicine recipes were not officially patented. Patent medicine promoters pioneered many advertising and sales techniques; this small collection primarily features trade cards and almanacs.

Paul Arthur, Jr., (1915-2000) spent most of his career as an industrial research chemist in the Central Research Department of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, where his most notable achievement was his work on Crolyn, a type of magnetic tape which was used primarily in the instrumentation, video, and computer industries. This small collection, assembled by Arthur's sister, Dorothy Arthur, consists of press releases, photographs, and published clippings related to Arthur's career with the DuPont Company.

Paul J. Ganahl (1916-2002) was an electrical engineer who served in the United States Air Force. This item is a manuscript diary kept by Ganahal between January 2, 1953, and December 31, 1953, while working as an electrical engineer performing aerial photography tests for the United States Air Force in California and New Mexico. The daily entries are bullet lists of film rolls develped, problems found, people met with or spoken to, flight test details, and places traveled. The diary provides technical information about the develpment of reconnaissance photography, engineering challenges, and project team communication.

Paul L. Bechly worked in various positions for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company between 1980 and 1993, including research and development, engineering, distribution, sales, and product management. Bechly's papers document his efforts at developing and implementing a successful perfluorocarbon (PFC) policy for the DuPont Company in the early 1990s. The papers also reflect DuPont’s companywide initiative to be at the forefront of environmental policy with regard to the global reduction of PFC emissions.

Paul W. Morgan (1911-1992) was a research chemist who spent his thirty-five-year career working in the DuPont Company's Pioneering Research Laboratory, part of the Textile Fibers Department (formerly the Rayon Department). His contributions include interfacial polycondensation reactions, a previously unexplored field of polymer chemistry. Morgan’s polymer condensation research ultimately yielded several commercially successful products. Among these were Nomex®, a high-temperature-resistant, thermally stable aramid fiber; Fiber B, a new tire reinforcing fiber that was twice as strong as ordinary synthetic tire yarns; and PRD-49, a high-modulus organic fiber marketed as Kevlar® aramid fiber. In addition to documenting Morgan’s career with DuPont, this collection also contains materials relating to the history of hand tools and tool manufacturers, amassed by Morgan following his retirement.

Paulina du Pont (1827-1914) was a descendant of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) who founded the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company with his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834) in 1802. The E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. Paulina du Pont was the daughter of Alfred Victor du Pont (1798-1856) and Margaretta Lammot du Pont (1807-1898). Her six-page sketchbook contains pencil sketches, probably produced in drawing class, depicts European rural scenes of cottages and country churches.

The five generation of the Peirce family owned farmland in Kennet Square, Pennsylvania. Over time the family added recreational facilities and opened the land to the public as "Peirce's Park" now Longwood Gardens. This small collection consists of photocopies of correspondence related the genealogy of the Peirce family.

The Peirce family was a Quaker farming family and the original owners of the Longwood Gardens property in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Twins Samuel Peirce (1766-1838) and Joshua Peirce (1766-1851) began planting quality trees and shrubs on the property in the early 1800s. Pierre Samuel "P.S." du Pont (1870-1954) was an industrialist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who purchased the site from the Peirce family in 1906 and established a foundation for an arboretum and botanical gardens called Longwood Gardens in 1954. This item is a genealogical chart of the Peirce family from its colonial ancestry to the grandchildren of Joshua Peirce.

The Pennsylvania New York Central Transportation Company was the creation of a 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads. In 1970, the "Penn Central" Transportation Company filed for bankruptcy and auctioned off Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central Railroad memorabilia, pictures, and other materials. This collection consists of a poster for the auction of Penn Central railroad memorabilia. The poster includes images of lanterns and a locomotive, both in black, on brown paper with text announcing dates for auction and preview.

A complete set of employee timetables for each region and division of the Penn Central Railroad.

Several generations of the Penn family were proprietors of the British colony of Pennsylvania. It was given to William Penn (1644-1718) in 1681 by Charles II of England in repayment of a debt owed to his father, Sir Admiral William Penn (1621-1670). Under Penn's directive, Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers escaping religious torment in England and other European nations. Three generations of Penn descendants held proprietorship of the colony until the American Revolution, when the family was stripped of all but its privately held shares of land. "Book A" is a record of deeds granted between April 24, 1784, and March 22, 1793, by members of the Penn family to various purchasers of those proprietary lands retained by the family after the American Revolution, located between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Penn Virginia Corporation was an oil and gas company, incorporated as the Virginia Coal & Iron Company on January 6, 1882. It was one of many firms established by a group of interrelated entrepreneurs headed by John Leisenring (1819-1884), a Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, civil and mining engineer. The name changed to Penn Virigina Corporation in 1967. The records of Penn Virginia Corporation cover the development and operations of the Virginia Coal & Iron Company, a large southern Appalachian land company, with some information on its immediate neighbors and local support facilities.

The Pennsylvania Indemnity Corporation was an automobile insurance company located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This item is a road atlas containing 32 pages of maps of the northeastern United States. Published by Rand McNally and Company.

The Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. is an energy utility and transmission distributor based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This small collection consists of a course book from a Pennsylvania Power & Light Company lighting workshop held in the fall of 1957.