Finding Aids

Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation (Convair) was an aircraft manufacturing company. It was formed in 1943 when the Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft corporations merged. Convair developed and produced military aircraft and guided missiles. This small collection consists of Convair publications primarily intended for internal purposes, such as employee handbooks, newsletters, or recruiting; there are a few items for a wider audience, such as information about specific company programs or company products.

The Radio Corporation of America (renamed RCA Corporation in 1969) was best known for its pioneering radio and television development and manufacturing. This small collection consists of non-RCA material collected by the David Sarnoff Library, as well as clippings relating to the library's closure.

Isaac Elder Blake (1844-1906) founded the Continental Oil and Transportation Company in 1875 in Utah as a distributor of oil, kerosene, and other products. In 1929, the company merged with the Marland Oil Company, continuing to operate using the name Continental Oil Company. This volume contains extracts of minutes and auditor's reports concerning a revision of the company's finances during the Great Depression and an analysis of the company's financial position and prospects.

Cooper & Hewitt partners were iron businessmen who purchased ironworks, property, and iron mines. In 1845, a rolling mill complex was incorporated as the Trenton Iron Company, and in 1847 iron mines at Andover, New Jersey, were purchased. The records consist of two payroll sheets from 1848, as well as eighty-two inbound letters, mostly from 1849 to 1850. The letters are primarily operating reports from the superintendent of the Andover mine.

Consists of the family papers of former DuPont CEO Lammot du Pont Copeland (1905-1983) and his wife Pamela Cunningham Copeland (1906-2001). The Copelands' papers document the lives and interests of a wealthy American couple in the twentieth century. In particular, the papers of Pamela C. Copeland are an important source of information about the public activities of women in the areas of historic preservation, gardening and horticulture, and philanthropy.

Ethel Lippman (1891-1987) and David Sarnoff (1891-1971) were friends in their youth; her parents supposedly objected to their marriage. The collection consists of a few copies of Ethel Lippman's handwritten letters and all of David Sarnoff's replies.

Records collected by Christopher P. Wahmann during his career as a manager in the Operating Department of Amtrak between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, including Amtrak documents and those of other railroads and commuter agencies over which Amtrak operates or that operate trains over Amtrak's lines.

The Craven-McDade family had several family members working in the gunpowder and explosives industry for the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company and later the Hercules Powder Company. These papers related to the Craven and McDade family of Henry Clay village in Delaware.

Crawford H. Greenewalt (1902-1993) was an executive with the DuPont Company and president of the firm from 1948 to 1962. The collection consists of photographs and other materials related to Crawford Greenewalt's career with the DuPont Company and his involvement with corporate boards and other business and scientific organizations, etc., such as Boeing, M.I.T., Smithsonian Institution, and Radio Free Europe.

Crawford Hallock Greenewalt (1902-1993) was a chemical engineer and the President of the DuPont Company from 1948 to 1962. The collection consists of photographs relating to the career of Crawford H. Greenewalt. The album consists of photographs of a trip Greenewalt made to Argentina in 1956 related to expansion plans for the Ducilo plant. The views were primarily taken at the Buenos Aires airport and at a banquet meeting.

Crawford Hallock Greenewalt (1902-1993) was a chemical engineer and the President of the DuPont Company from 1948 to 1962. He had a passion for the natural sciences, and combined his love of ornithology with photography. He was especially known for his high speed photographs of hummingbirds. The bulk of the collection consists of nature films shot by Greenewalt, primarily of hummingbirds. The collection is divided into three series: Nature films, DuPont films and Sound recordings.

Crawford H. Greenewalt (1902-1993) was an executive with the DuPont Company and president of the firm from 1948 to 1962. This collection consists of Greenewalt's papers from his time as president and chairman of the board. There is a broad range of external correspondence, internal company communications and reports, presidential working papers, transcripts of speeches, and published articles that make up the collection.

Crawford H. Greenewalt (1902-1993) was an executive with the DuPont Company and president of the firm from 1948 to 1962. He had a passion for the natural sciences, and combined his love of ornithology with photography. He was especially known for his high-speed photographs of hummingbirds. His ornithological interests included bird songs, the radiance of hummingbird feathers, and the evolution of shapes and sizes of birds in relation to their flight abilities. Greenewalt's personal papers are primarily focused on his retirement years and his avocational interests. The papers document Greenewalt's political activities in the Republican National Committee and include exchanges with many of the leading political and business figures of the day. Of particular significance are the papers describing Greenewalt's work in photography and ornithology, beginning in 1948. These materials trace his research interests in the hummingbird and bird flight and his trips to places like Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, the Antilles, New Guinea, and the Galapagos Islands in order to observe and photograph birds in their natural habitats. Other files describe Greenewalt's work on the visiting committee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1965-1987), which evaluated the school's academic programs.

Crawford H. Greenewalt (1902-1993) was an executive with the DuPont Company and president of the firm from 1948 to 1962. In 1942, when the DuPont Company agreed to participate in the Manhattan Project, Greenewalt was named chief liaison, working with the physicists at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, including Arthur Compton (1892-1962) and Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), who were developing techniques for plutonium separation. The collection consists of eight volumes of Greenewalt's diaries, which describe the history of the Manhattan Project and the development of the United States' first atomic bombs that were used to end the Second World War. The diaries describe the technical history of the project, as well as the relationships that developed between scientists.

Creed and Company Limited was originally founded as Creed, Bille & Company Limited by Frederick George Creed (1871-1957) and Harald Bille (1879-1916) in 1912 to manufacture and sell telegraphy equipment. In the early 1900s, Creed had invented several machines that facilitated the sending and receiving of Morse code messages. Much of Creed and Company's manufacturing capacity was in Croydon, London, England. These photographs show a group tour of the Creed and Company Limited plant in Croydon on October 14, 1954.

The Crofton and Shubrick families were descendants of a prominent French American diplomat and businessman, Victor Marie du Pont (1767-1827), and represent middle-class American women in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Two generations of women married military men who were stationed across the world. This collection spans three generations of women (Julia du Pont Shubrick, Gabrielle Josephine Shubrick Crofton, and Julia du Pont Crofton Walcutt) from these families and contains correspondence regarding everyday life.

These photographs document the abandoned site where the Peoples Railway trolley car passed under the tracks of the Wilmington and Northern Railroad in Rockford Park near the Brandywine Creek. The Peoples Railway Company started in 1900 to bring visitors via electric trolley to the Brandywine Springs Amusement Park outside of Wlimington. The Wilmington and Northern Railroad Company was a branch of the Reading railroad system running in a north-south direction between Wilmington, Delware and Reading, Pennsylvania. Its object was to connect the various industrial plants located along Brandywine Creek with other railroads leading to the west and to the anthracite coal regions.

Louise Evelina du Pont (1877-1958) was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Algernon du Pont. In 1922 Henry A. du Pont purchased the original family home, Eleutherian Mills, for his daughter who, with her husband, began restoring the house and building a Renaissance garden adjoining it. This collection consists of twelve black and white photographs of Louise and Frank Crowninshield's garden at Eleutherian Mills, apparently taken by Horace Dugdale during a visit, circa 1938. Also two photographs of the abandon Hagley House which stood nearby.

Cinecraft Productions was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations. Cinecraft was one among hundreds of production houses in the U.S. during the middle decades of the 20th century that specialized in motion pictures commonly referred to as non-theatrical, industrial, business and/or sponsored films. This collection documents the history of the company, the people that worked there, and some of the company's film and educational projects. The collection has been arranged into three series: Company and personnel history; Films; and Educational materials. The materials date from 1937 to 2016 with a bulk of the collection dating from 1937 to 1975.

Members of the Curtis family were paper manufacturers at Newton Lower Falls, Massachusetts, and Newark, Delaware. Alfred A. Curtis (1848-1945) was president of the family paper company from 1911 to 1926. The papers consist of personal and family items collected by Alfred A. Curtis. Included in the collection is a scrapbook of photographs and newspaper clippings, a number of loose papers and clippings, and several histories of the Curtis Paper Company. The papers also contain some letters and notes of Alfred A. Curtis, many connected with genealogy and family history.

The Curtis Paper Company was a small producer specializing in high-quality paper located in Newark, Delaware. This small collection of records consists of incorporation papers from 1911 and financial reports dating from 1941 to 1946. There are two agreements and two letters related to the sale of the company from Alfred A. Curtis (1848-1945) to Charles M. Levis (1859-1941) and Herbert W. Mason (1882-1939) in 1926.

The Curtis Paper Company was a small producer specializing in high-quality paper located in Newark, Delaware. Their records consist primarily of account books, with some organization papers, deeds, and correspondence.

For what appears a brief moment in early aviation history, the Wright Brothers competed their airplanes in public demonstrations. The Curtiss Exhibition Co.'s Glenn Curtiss piloted one of his biplanes, and Walter Brookins piloted a Wright biplane. Three photos show the Curtiss biplane on the beach before take-off with a Boardwalk crowd nearby. Two others show the Curtiss and Wright airplanes separately in flight.

Windsor Farms is one of Richmond's first planned neighborhood, primarily of Colonial Revival design. Architects included Duncan Lee, William Lawrence Bottomley, and C.W. Huff Jr. This collection includes plans, elevations, details, and typed specifications for a house built for Eugene E. du Pont (1914-1995) by architect C.W. Huff Jr.

The C.W. Parker Amusement Company produced various amusement devices, such as shooting galleries and ferris wheels, but was best known for its carousels named "Carry-Us-Alls." When the company was founded in 1894 by C.W. Parker (1864-1932) in Abilene, Kansas, it was the only carousel manufacturer not on the east coast. This small collection of records documents the professional life of C.W. Parker, the "Amusement King" and his company. The collection comprised of textual material, including financial records, correspondence with other manufacturing vendors, and publications regarding the company's progress.

Cyril C. Thompson (1892-1976) had a long career in the accounting, management and public relations sides of the aviation industry, joining near the beginning of commercial aviation in 1928 and retiring just as the era of commercial jets began. Thompson was as an executive of United Air Lines for eighteen years, and later an airport planner, consultant, and prolific author and speaker. The papers of Cyril C. Thompson consist of a selection of items that he retained as mementos of the different stages of his career, plus materials and drafts for an unpublished biography of Idaho Senator William E. Borah and a never-completed personal history of United Air Lines on which he was working at the time of his death.

This collection represents materials collected by Cyrus J. Sharer for his research on the iron and steel industry and particularly the world iron ore trade. The main emphasis is on the iron ore trade of the Great Lakes. The period covered, mid-1960s to mid-1980s, was one of crisis and reorganization in the American steel industry and in the lake ore trade, and this is reflected in the records.

The Dallin Aerial Surveys Company produced aerial photographs for newspapers, businesses, municipalities, and private individuals. The company was founded in 1924 by Colonel J. (John) Victor Dallin (1897-1991), a Royal Flying Corps-trained pilot who served in World War One. During WWI he became involved in aerial photography on a reconnaissance mission during the latter stages of the war. This collection consists of over 13,000 aerial photographs primarily of the Mid-Atlantic region taken between 1925 and 1941. The company made vertical and oblique aerial photographs of factories, private estates, schools, country clubs, towns, airports, rivers, and many other sites and some news events of the day. The subject with the largest number of views is the city of Philadelphia.

Dan Dee Pretzel and Potato Chip Company was an American snack food manufacturer based in Cleveland, Ohio. This collection consists of nine short, silent film reels depicting select manufacturing and packaging processes at the company's factory and warehouse.

Daniel Cauffiel (1867-1930) was a merchant, real estate developer, and entrepreneur of Johnstown, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. The Daniel Cauffiel papers depict his career as a small business entrepreneur and as an agent or employee of the du Pont family and in their various businesses.

Daniel Rochford (1900-1989) spent the bulk of his career as a publicist in the Employee Relations Department of the Standard Oil Company. Before joining Standard Oil in 1944, he worked a series of jobs trying to utilize his skills in publicity and public relations throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. Rochford's papers are a mix of business and personal items, assembled over the course of his varied career.

Science and Corporate Strategy is a scholarly history of Research and Development at the DuPont Company authored by David A. Hounshell (1950-) and John Kenly Smith (1951-). The collection consists of research files compiled by Hounshell Smith for the purpose of writing the book. Research files include copies of correspondence, articles, reports, patents, chronologies, organizational charts, and contracts from the DuPont Company from 1903 though 1980.

David Crumley Bevan (1906-1996) was the Chief Financial Officer of the Penn Central Transportation Company during its financial collapse in the early 1970s, the result of a poorly planned merger between the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the New York Central Railroad Company in 1968. The papers document the initial bankruptcy of Penn Central in 1970 and the proceeding court cases against both the company and David Bevan personally, who was accused and later acquitted of financial mismanagement.

David Harrison Cope (1913-2001) held a lifelong interest in railroads and, in particular, steam locomotives. He began collecting photographs at an early age. This collection primarily consists of black and white photographs and negatives of steam locomotives from a variety of railroads, but it includes some other rolling stock, station photos, related railroad items such as coaling stations and some street railroads, interurbans, and trolley images.

David H. Dawson (1908-1976) was a chemist, senior vice president, and Executive Committee member at the DuPont Company, where he worked for forty years. Dawson's papers consist of speeches and published papers related to his professional life. They also include materials related to his undergraduate education at Drexel University and The Ohio State University, including his doctoral dissertation on heavy water, which probably relates to the hydrogen bomb's development during World War II. There are also some early engineering publications.

David Sarnoff (1891-1971) was president of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), one of the country’s leading manufacturers and vendors of radios, phonographs, and televisions. He established the David Sarnoff Library, to house his private papers and professional records. The collections developed further with the acquisition of papers of former RCA executives, scientists, and engineers. There are twenty collections from the David Sarnoff Library. Cumulatively it includes thousands of linear feet of documents, reports, photographs, films, and publications detailing the rise and fall of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and of Sarnoff, its longtime leader. The list of links in this resource will take you to the finding aids for collections within the David Sarnoff Library at Hagley.

The David Sarnoff Library was established at the David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, New Jersey in 1967 as a showcase for the accomplishments of long-time Radio Corporation of America (RCA) head David Sarnoff. After five years of activity, the Library was largely moribund until the arrival of Alex Magoun as Curator (later Executive Director) in 1998. Under his leadership, the Library expanded its mission to include the history of RCA in general and the David Sarnoff Research Center in particular. Due to lack of funding, the David Sarnoff Library closed in 2009. The collection documents the creation and evolution of the Library through board of directors records, correspondence, reports, oral histories, and photographs.

David Sarnoff (1891-1971) was the iconic leader of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for most of the company's history. For many years the only Jewish executive in the communications field, Sarnoff was highly influential in the development of radio and television. The focus of the David Sarnoff papers is the original David Sarnoff Collection assembled by Sarnoff to celebrate his career. However, the papers also include the extensive photographic, publicity, and administrative files created by his staff at RCA and a substantial audiovisual component.

The David Sarnoff Research Center (DSRC) in Princeton, New Jersey was the central research organization for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) from 1942 to 1987. Following GE’s acquisition of RCA in 1986, the DSRC was donated to SRI International as a contract research laboratory. Renamed the Sarnoff Corporation in 1997, it was integrated into SRI in 2011. The records document the pioneering research of its scientists and trace the history of the organization from its establishment into the twenty-first century.

David Thomas (1794-1882) was a Pennsylvania iron manufacturer who introduced into the United States the use of anthracite coal in the manufacture of pig iron. The papers consist of twenty-eight letters received by Thomas between May 1839 and 1842. They contain important new information on one of the textbook examples of nineteenth century technology transfer.

David Thomas (1794-1882) was a Pennsylvania iron manufacturer who introduced into the United States the use of anthracite coal in the manufacture of pig iron. The papers consist of typed transcripts twelve letters, the bulk of which were sent by David Thomas to his niece, Jane Harris Bowen, and nephew, David Harris, in Wales. The letters deal primarily with family news, but Thomas also writes about general business conditions, the level of prices and wages and the Civil War.

The Dayton Display Fixture Company manufactured and sold grocery store display equipment. Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, the firm operated between 1919 and World War II, selling metal shelving and refrigerated and electrified fruit and vegetable displays. This collection consists of a single album containing sales sample photographs that show product and floor displays for grocery store fruits and vegetables and dry goods in the 1930s.

The D.E. Jones Company, and its successor, Edith N. McConnell, were caterers and confectioners in Wilmington, Delaware. The records consist of recipe books, account books, and ledgers that identify individual and corporate customers, and describe types of food prepared for and purchased by clients, who were generally entertaining guests.

The Chicago Railroad Fair was the first exposition after the Second World War and the last exposition that featured railroads as its theme. It marked the centennial of the arrival of railroads to Chicago and their role in westward expansion. This is a postcard of the narrow gauge Deadwood Central train that carried visitors around the fairground.

Oliver Canby (1716-1754) was a miller on the Brandywine Creek. This collection of deeds and indentures documents the acquisition of mills or mill seats, and other lands near the Brandywine Creek in Wilmington, Delaware by the Canby family. This collection was in the possession and care of the Canby family until it was given to Hagley Museum and Library in 2011 by a descendant of Oliver Canby.

The Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad Company was incorporated in 1874, for the purpose of forming a second railroad route between the cities of New York and Philadelphia. Their records consist primarily of basic corporate documents such as minutes, account books, annual reports to the I.C.C., and agreements.

The Delaware Coach Company was originally incorporated as the Wilmington & Philadelphia Traction Company on June 25, 1910, and operated an electric street railway line from Wilmington, Delaware, to Chester, Pennsylvania, and to Philadelphia. Throughout the early twentieth century, the company purchased stock in and leased numerous electric railway, transportation, and utilities companies in the Wilmington and Chester areas. In 1941, it changed its name to the Delaware Coach Company as trackless trolleys and buses replaced electric streetcars. Included are official documents and correspondence; personnel and financial records; public relations files; land deeds; legislation; labor agreements and contracts; equipment, fare, and route policies; ordinances; minute books, and other miscellaneous material created by Delaware Coach and its predecessor electric streetcar companies.

The Delaware Construction Company was a building company, constructing residential houses in downtown Wilmington, Delaware. It was founded in 1909 as a subsidiary of the National Real Estate Trust Company, which provided loans and financing for the properties. This small collection consists of five blueprints of houses by E. Olney Sherman, dated 1910 for Delaware Construction Co.

Horace Holden Thayer, Jr. (1878-1959) was a naval architect, mechinical engineer, and businessman. Between 1909 and 1914 Thayer worked for the Delaware Construction Company which was a building company, constructing residential homes in downtown Wilmington, Delaware. This collection contains photographs of fifteen homes taken between 1910 and 1914. The images are of exterior views only.

St. Andrew's congregation was founded in 1829 in Wilmington, Delaware. This collection contains two Delaware Engagement Calendars, "Historical Edition 1638-1840" and "Historical Edition 1840-1905" for calendar years 1958 and 1959 respectively.