Finding Aids

Archmere Academy is a private college preparatory school founded in 1932 on the former John J. Raskob (1879-1950) estate in Claymont, Delaware. The collection contains architectual drawings of various floors, bathrooms, and other rooms in the Academy.

Arnold M. Kneitel (1923-2012) worked in the Film Department of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, specializing in marketing research for Mylar polyester film. His papers are related to his career he preserved at home and include ephemera relating to the marketing of Mylar and papers on office management information systems and the early years of word processing, among other items.

Arthur D. Hall (1924-2006) was a systems engineer who spent the first part of his career with Bell Telephone Laboratories and later taught at the University of Pennsylvania and conducted an independent consulting business. In the latter capacity he developed a patented automated agricultural production system that the called "Autofarm," but was unable to make the leap from invention to true innovation. It was an early, but failed attempt at "green" farming. The Arthur D. Hall III papers represent a portion of his total archive that survived at the time of his death and was removed from his home office in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The main focus of the papers is Hall's work to develop Autofarm and his unsuccessful attempts to secure funding and market the concept to paying customers. There are smaller amounts of material dealing with his career at Bell Labs and his writing and publishing efforts.

Arthur H. MacLeod (1914-2003) was an employee of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. Entitled "Washburn and Wilmington: a tale of two cities," the item is a paper read by MacLeod before the Washburn Historical Society, which covers the history of the Barksdale Works of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company in Washburn, Wisconsin, from its construction in 1904 to its abandonment in 1971.

The Artillery Fuse Company of Wilmington, Delaware, was a special venture formed to supply ordnances during World War I and was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Manufacturers Contracting Company. The records consist of scattered business records for the Manufacturers Contracting Company, the Artillery Fuse Company, and the later General Manufacturing Company.

Founded in 1861, the Artisans Savings Bank of Wilmington, Delaware assisted working people to save and make money available for home mortgages. This collection primarily consists of their financial records.

The Associated Factory Mutual Fire Insurance Companies comprised twenty-eight mutual insurance firms that specialized in industrial fire insurance. The collection consists of seventy original hand-colored plans and maps primarily depicting textile mills, paper products factories and foundries in New England and New York.

The Associated General Contractors of America formed in 1918 as a trade organization representing the interests of the construction industry. Initially organized as a response to the demands placed on contractors during the First World War, today the Association has over 26,000 member firms. The records of the Associated General Contractors of America consist of annual convention and board meeting reports; minutes, digests of action, and resolutions of the executive committee; an unpublished history of the organization, and general and internal policy statements.

The Atlantic Dynamite Company was one of the largest manufacturers of dynamite in the United States between 1882 and 1904. These are four volumes containing entries listing employees, hours worked, and wages paid at a dynamite plant at Kenvil, New Jersey.

Incorporated in 1912, Atlas Powder Company functioned as an independent explosives and chemicals company until 1971, when it was purchased by Imperial Chemical Industries Limited (U.K.) and became its American affiliate under the name ICI Americas, Inc. The collection consists of minutes, reports, and correspondence from Atlas in addition to both predecessor and subsidiary companies.

The Atterbury family, specifically brothers John Guest Atterbury (1811-1887) and William Wallace Atterbury (1823-1911), and John's son William Wallace Atterbury (1866-1935), were descendants of a London bank house representative and Huguenot family. John was a lawyer and later a Presbyterian minister, as was William. The younger William was a career officer for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Atterbury family papers consist primarily of the personal papers of the younger W.W. Atterbury as preserved by his family, along with a few items from his father and uncle.

Aurora Gun Club is a private target shooting organization and social club. It has had six locations since its founding in 1895 by brothers Eugene du Pont (1873-1954) and Alexis I. du Pont (1869-1921), are all centered in the area around Wilmington, Delaware. The records of the Aurora Gun Club are comprised of records collected by the club presidents and treasurers from approximately 1955 through 2006. The records range from membership rosters, club bulletins and shoot results to financial records.

Austin Homer (1896-1974) was president of J.E. Caldwell Company, jewelers, silversmiths, and antiquarians in Philadelphia. Homer was a well-known business executive and was recognized as one of the nation's foremost authorities on contemporary and antique silver. He was also involved in designing children's toys. His papers consists of correspondence, speeches, patents, notebooks, and sketches while he was president of J.E. Caldwell Inc., and correspondence, contracts, sketches, and prototypes when he was a toy designer.

B. Schwanda & Sons was a manufacturer and wholesaler of pearl buttons with factories in Long Island City, New York, Staffordville, Connecticut, and Denton, Maryland, and offices and showrooms in Manhattan. The small fragment of surviving records contains information on dyeing and bleaching the mother-of-pearl for buttons, purchasing and sales to discount stores, inter-office memos, inventories, sample cards of buttons, and limited information about the factories and piece-work rates.

Bailey, Banks & Biddle (BB&B) was a renowned upscale jewelry firm that made and sold high quality merchandise in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Bailey Banks & Biddle records were collected and maintained in-house as a combination of archival documents and historical research files and used primarily for public relations purposes. The collection primarily documents the sales and remounting of diamonds between 1879 and 1962.

The Bancroft family owned and operated the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company, a cotton cloth manufacturer in Rockford, Delaware, beginning in 1831. The volumes help document the activities of two generations of the Bancroft family in England and America and the operations and employees of two early Delaware Valley textile mills.

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. The collection contains material related to the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company, Eddystone Manufacturing Company, genealogical notes on the Bancroft-Wood family, and the Delaware postal system.

The Bancroft family owned and operated the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company, a cotton cloth manufacturer in Rockford, Delaware, beginning in 1831. The records document the activities of two generations of the Bancroft family in England and America and consist primarily of account books from the various family businesses, including the Todmorden and Brandywine woolen mills and the Rockford cotton mill.

The Bank of Delaware was a statewide financial services company that was organized on June 1, 1795. It received its original charter on February 9, 1796, becoming the first bank in and of the State of Delaware. In 1865 it received a national charter under the National Banking Act and was renamed the National Bank of Delaware at Wilmington. It operated under this name until its 1930 failure and subsequent acquisition by the Security Trust Company. The name "Bank of Delaware" was revived by the successor company in 1958. The Bank of Delaware's holding company was merged into PNC Financial Corp. in 1989. The Bank of Delaware collection consists of minute books, stock certificate books, letter books, journals, and ledgers of the Bank of Delaware and nine of its predecessor, merged, and acquired financial institutions.

Francis Bannerman Son was a major purveyor of military goods to sportsmen and collectors in New York City over three generations. The collection consists of Bannerman family's personal papers, correspondence, travel diaries, and financial documents concerning Bannerman Island.

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.

The Jenks family produced talented inventors over many generations. Between the 1820s and the 1870s the family businesses were the leading cotton textile machine builders in Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, the firm operated a rifle factory as part of the Union war effort. The collection consist of a series of fragments handed down in the Jenks family related to several of their business ventures.

Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn Inc. (BBDO) is a worldwide advertising agency network headquartered in New York City. The company began in 1891 as the George Batten Company. In 1928, it merged with Barton, Durstine & Osborn. With locations in eighty-one countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, UAE, and seven in the United States, BBDO is among the world’s most awarded advertising agencies. The records cover the entire span of BBDO’s existence, beginning with the George Batten Company in 1891. The collection includes advertisement tear sheets, films, ledgers, marketing reports, personnel files, photographs, press coverage, publications, research reports, slides, and speeches.

The Bauduy family was associated with the prominent du Pont family, who immigrated to the United States from France in 1802 and established the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, which manufactured gunpowder at mills on the banks of the Brandywine River just north of Wilmington, Delaware. Peter Bauduy (1769?-1833), a French refugee from Santo Domingo who was a partner of Eleuthère Irénée "E.I." du Pont (1771-1834). This collection contains correspondence of Hélène Bauduy (1806-1881), Peter Bauduy's daughter, and Alexandre Aristide Bretton de Chapelles (1799-1850), and a journal kept by Eulalia Keating (1801-1873), Bauduy's daughter-in-law.

The Bauduy family was associated with the prominent du Pont family, who immigrated to the United States from France in 1802 and established the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, which manufactured gunpowder at mills on the banks of the Brandywine River just north of Wilmington, Delaware. Peter Bauduy (1769-1833), a French refugee from Santo Domingo who was a partner of Eleuthère Irénée "E.I." du Pont (1771-1834). The bulk of the collection consists of letters from Juliette Bauduy (1773-1837) to her daughter Mimika (1793-1855). Also included are letters from Peter and Juliette to her sister and the Bauduy children to their aunt.

Incorporated in 1830, Beaver Meadow Railroad & Coal Company transported anthracite coal mined in Beaver Meadow to Philadelphia markets. The company merged into the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1864. Their records consist of stock transfer books in two volumes, dated 1833 to 1846 and 1861 to 1863, which list transactions of the company shares and changes in ownership.

Bellevue estate, now the Bellevue State Park, is a historic estate that was once a series of farms owned by members of the Orr, Grubb, and Stevenson families and later purchased by William du Pont (1855-1928). The records are a series of deeds covering the conveyance of the Bellevue property from 1782 to 1920. There are also three maps of the estate, including one showing the location of the house and landscaping.

Bessie Gardner du Pont (1864-1949) wrote several publications on the du Pont family and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co's history. This collection contains photocopies and microfilm of "Notes for History," notes she compiled for her study E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., a history, 1802-1902 (Boston, 1920).

The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was the number two steel producer in the United States between 1916 and 1984. For a time it was also the largest shipbuilding firm in the world. The records of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation (parent company) are a series of fragments, lacking the complete runs of corporate and executive documents that normally comprise a business archive, and largely consist of fragmentary corporate records and files from executive officers.

Betts & Seal was an iron foundry in Wilmington, Delaware that operated under that name from 1857 to 1867, but was established in 1828. The Betts family of Wilmington, Delaware, produced three generations of innovative founders and machinists. The records of Betts & Seal cover the operation of the foundry from 1828 to 1867. The result is a rare time-capsule look at the workings of a small but innovative foundry during the first phase of American industrialization.

Bill Mackey (1906-1996) was a chemical engineer and the plant manager of the Technical Division of the Explosives Department of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. His papers consist of a mix of personal and DuPont Company materials documenting his career as an explosives expert.

In its various iterations, the Boeing Vertol Company has been a major developer and builder of helicopters. These records reflect development, manufacture, testing, improvement, and sale of helicopters, especially for military use in Vietman. This includes information relating to reports on factories visited, military needs of the United States and foreign countries, sales, conferences, and meetings with military personnel, government agencies, and representatives of foreign countries.

A small body of letters and fragments recovered from the Graystone mansion property at Coatesville, Pennsylvania, relating to the Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory during the time when Rebecca Webb Pennock Lukens (1794-1854) was proprietor after the death of her husband.

The Brandywine Manufacturers Sunday School (BMSS) was organized in 1817 as a non-sectarian school for the children of the local factory workers, with instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), founder of the DuPont Company, was one of its chief subscribers, and the school building was located on his property. Primarily generated and maintained by the du Pont women, the BMSS records include the school's constitution, and financial records such as bills, receipts, and accounts. Most of the records pertain to students with information about premiums which were given as rewards for attendance and scholarly excellence.

Brandywine Springs, located on the Newport-Gap Turnpike about five miles west of Wilmington, Delaware, was first developed as a spa by the Brandywine Chalybeate Springs Company in 1827. Richard W. Crook (1850-1948) later leased the property in 1886 and converted it into a typical nineteenth-century streetcar amusement park, although he was unable to complete the streetcar connection with Wilmington until 1901. The entries in the ledger are in the hand of William Jenks Fell (1839-1903), the lessor of the park, and describe expenditures on improving the rides and concessions.

Brooke Hindle (1918-2001) was a prominent historian who wrote extensively on early American science and technology. Hindle was senior resident scholar at the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation (1969-1970), a member of its advisory committee (1971-1974), and a trustee (1974-1985). This essay, delivered at a conference held at Hagley in 1965, reviews the historiography of early American technology, suggesting various methods of approaching the subject and stressing the "Americanness" of American technology.

Brown & Hewett were merchants of Oneida County, New York. The journal contains the accounts of individuals doing business with the firm, which was a typical backcountry mercantile enterprise trading imported goods such as brandy, rum, tobacco, paper, textiles, and merchandise for local staples like wheat and lumber.

The Brown Instrument Company developed, manufactured, and sold industrial controls and measuring instruments, such as thermometers, pressure gauges, voltmeters, and pyrometers. The company was founded in 1857 by an English engineer and inventor, Edward Brown (1834-1905). The records of the Brown Instrument Company consist of research files documenting the development of measuring instruments and industrial control systems used in continuous process manufacturing.

Bruce A. Bydal (1937-) worked as a research engineer at the DuPont Company for over twenty years, is an expert in gun primers and chemicals, and an avid gun collector. He also worked with the Remington Arms Company, a subsidiary of the DuPont Company, to develop a new shotgun. The papers include descriptions of Bydal's work in DuPont's food and packaging division and his work at the Nylon plant in Martinsville, Virginia. However, approximately one-half of the records pertaining to his work in applied mathematics at Remington Arms, a gun manufacturing company acquired by DuPont during the great depression.

The Budd Company was a manufacturer of steel automobiles, passenger rail cars, and other transportation products. The company began in 1912 in Philadelphia as the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company, specializing in the manufacturing of all-steel body automobiles. This small collection of papers from the Braking Systems Division consists mainly of Budd Company engineering reports dating from 1946 to 1973. These reports examine brake drums, brake linings, and noise generation. There is also a small set of reports from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) that dates from 1963 to 1967. Also included are materials from the Budd Institute, Phase II, a week-long training at Michigan State University Management Education Center in November 1993.

The collection consists of a synthetic historical file assembled for public relations purposes at Budd Company's Michigan headquarters.

The collection consists of a small group of legal documents of the Budd Company and its related firms preserved by a former employee. Also included are the papers of Budd Company's British and German affiliates, property leases, and agreements.

C. Bruce Brooks (1931-2016) was a chemical engineer and program manager for Thiokol Chemical Corporation (later Morton-Thiokol) from 1958 until his retirement in 1995. Thiokol is a leader in aerospace research, design, manufacturing, and testing of solid propellant rocket motors. This small collection of Brooks' papers provides valuable information about the development of solid rocket motors and early space flight. Of particular interest are trial materials related to the 1984 loss of two communications satellites, the Westar VI and the Palapa B-2. Brooks was program manager for designing and manufacturing the STAR 48 motors used in the satellites. The collection has been arranged into six series: Space programs publications and reports; Solid rocket motors (SRM) files; McDonnell Douglas Corporation v. Thiokol Corporation files; Newsletters, magazines, and technical papers; Company histories and personal papers; and Additional work papers.

C. Robert Werle (1893-1990) was an industrial engineer who worked for Cooley & Marvin Company of Boston conducting time studies, as well as analysis of accounting and plant methods for a variety of clients, mostly in the textile, leather, woodworking, and metalworking industries. Werle's papers cover his career between 1917 and 1931, with emphasis on his employment at Cooley & Marvin; Bigelow, Kent, Willard & Co.; and Watsontown Door & Sash. The papers include correspondence, reports, and work papers, mostly connected with time studies. There are numerous examples of the standard forms, cards, and tags used to control reporting and the routing of materials in factories.

Carl George Dietsch (1900-1978) was an electrical engineer who specialized in shortwave radio transmitters. He supervised the construction of radio stations for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) from the 1930s to the 1960s, including locations in Brazil, Argentina, the Philippines, Japan, and Morocco. This collection consists of materials relating to Dietsch’s projects for RCA and NBC, particularly concerning the construction of a radio station in Tangier, Morocco, as well as the World War II Voice of America project in Dixon, California. The bulk of the collection material spans from the 1920s to the 1960s, with some later material from Dietsch’s time as a private engineering consultant. The collection includes correspondence, patent material, trade catalogs and publications, manuscript material, photographs and negatives, blueprints, diazotypes, audiovisual material, and drafting tools. This collection would be useful to researchers interested in shortwave radio station construction.

Carnegie Steel Company was a large steel manufacturer primarily founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) in 1892, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Lucy Furnaces were blast furnaces that initially produced iron, but switched to steel. This item is a time book registering the hours worked by Carnegie Steel Company Lucy Furnaces employees in 1904.

The Technical Department at DuPont's Carney's Point Works was established to collaborate with scientists at the DuPont Experimental Station and Eastern Laboratory of the Repauno Works to develop new products, maintain quality control, and improve products and processes. The collection focuses on the department's start-up period (1906-1910) and the two World Wars.

The collection consists of a day book kept by an unidentified carpenter in the Philadelphia area from 1796 to 1799.

Carter Litchfield (1932-2007) an organic chemist who studied and specialized in edible fats and oils. In the course of his career Litchfield also built an interesting and significant collection of books, manuscripts, and ephemera relating to the history of fatty materials. The collection is arranged into seven series and includes his research with animal fats and fatty materials, collecting activities, research and publication on the history of oil mills around the world; the papers of Julius Lewkowitsch, the first authority on fats and fatty materials; the papers of Ellsworth C. Warner, founder of the Midland Linseed Products Company; and the correspondence of Frech Chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul

The Philadelphia chemical manufacturing firm of Carter & Scattergood was founded in 1834. It continued to do business under that name until 1911, when it was sold to the Henry Bower Chemical Manufacturing Company. Their records include day books, ledgers, receipt books, laboratory books containing records of wages, materials, processes and apparatus; production tables; correspondence including one describing in detail the first four years of the firm's operations; and receipts and bills.