Finding Aids

The William Shinn & Co. installed stamped sheetmetal ceilings, cornices, skylights, roofing, and ductwork and employed about a dozen workers and apprentices. It was founded in 1907 in Wilmington, Delaware by William Shinn (1883-1947), a tinsmith and cornice worker, and his brother John A. Shinn (1886-1955). The records are a very small sample of accounting items documenting the operation of a handicraft contracting business.

William W. Morris (1869-1931) was a farmer in Greenwood, Sussex County, Delaware. This is a collection of miscellaneous bills, checks, and receipts that was preserved primarily as a sample of late nineteenth century letterheads and billheads, although it also documents the typical purchases of a downstate Delaware farmer.

William Young (1755-1829) was a Philadelphia bookseller and later a manufacturer at Rockland, Delaware. Miscellaneous papers including genealogical and biographical information, letter, and paper samples produced by Young.

William Young (1755-1829) was a Philadelphia bookseller and later a manufacturer at Rockland, Delaware. This item is a photocopy of letter of introduction from William Young to Charles and Victor du Pont for Frederick Rapp.

William Young (1755-1829) was a Philadelphia bookseller and later a manufacturer at Rockland, Delaware. Letters to Young regarding paper business, two ship bill of lading, and two legal documents on paper produced by Young.

Engineer's notebook kept by future DuPont Company vice president Willis F. Harrington (1882-1960) while an entry-level engineer at the Barksdale Works in Wisconsin.

The Wilmington Savings Fund Society was established in 1831 as a "safe depository for the earnings of working people" which also promoted the opportunity for homebuilding and lending money for home mortgages. Their records consist primarily of minutes and account books.

The Wilmington Trapshooting Association was organized in November 1916 with William Highfield (1884-1943) as President, C. Thorpe Martin (1880-1955) as Vice President, E.R. Galvin (dates unknown) as Secretary. The records include minutes, financial ledgers, handbooks, rulebooks, and membership lists.

The Wilmington Trust Company is a financial institution that was started as a banking, trust, and safe deposit company for the du Pont family and other Delaware wealthy families. It is now a subsidiary of M & T Bank. The records contain some information on the workings of the Trust Department, but are more useful for the information they contain on the individual companies in which the department invested. It includes account reviews, responsibility reviews, and security reviews, but is largely investment analysis files, by company.

The Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR) National Committee investigated the increase in drunkenness and effect of Prohibition, operated a publicity campaign, created a speakers' bureau, spoke at legislative hearings, and enrolled members. This collection of the Pennsylvania division records consists of the Executive Committee minutes, administrative files, financial records, and membership records.

The Wood family was founders of one of Philadelphia's great Quaker mercantile and manufacturing families, and within a couple of generations founded the Wawa Dairy Farms. The papers were primarily collected by Julianna Randolph (1810-1885), wife of Richard D. Wood (1799-1869), and include correspondence from Julianna Randolph, her parents Edward (1784-1834) and Mary Taylor Randolph (1790-1868), and her husband Richard Wood. The letters are almost entirely limited to correspondence within the Wood-Randolph kinship group.

The Woodlawn Trustees Inc., a major landowner in suburban Wilmington, Delaware, began developing Woodbrook and Sharpley neighborhoods in the mid-1950s. This collection illustrates the process of creating suburban residential subdivision in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

The Woodlawn Trustees, Incorporated, is a non-profit real estate development firm incorporated in Delaware on December 12, 1918, by textile manufacturer William Poole Bancroft (1835-1928). Their records include charters, minutes, officer lists, directors' correspondence, real estate records, property maps, reports, drawings and specifications and newspaper and journal articles on the history of the Trustees and of the Bancroft family.

WorldAutoSteel is an institutional membership organization comprised of eighteen major global steel producers dedicated to innovative vehicle steel application technologies that are environmentally sustainable and meet the automotive industry's needs. This collection consists of records that document a series of projects conducted by WorldAutoSteel, a unit of the World Steel Association. The files come from WorldAutoSteel headquarters, primarily from Edward Opbroek, who was the director of WorldAutoSteel from 2006 to 2011 and the program director for UltraLight Steel Auto Body (ULSAB) and UltraLight Steel Auto Body - Advanced Vehicle Concepts (ULSAB-AVC). These records would be of value to researchers interested in the intersection of the steel and automobile industries, automotive benchmarking, innovations in steel design and engineering, and communications strategies.

The Worth Steel Company was a manufacturer of steel plates in Claymont, Delaware. Its records consist of papers from its operations and from its predecessor companies (Viaduct Iron Works and Worth Brothers Company, both of Coatesville, Pennsylvania). Items include correspondence, accounts, datasheets, agreements, closing papers in sale to Colorado Fuel and Iron Corporation in 1951, and the sale of land in 1958.

Samuel Gardiner Wright (1781-1845) was a West Jersey Quaker merchant and ironmaster who conducted a wide-ranging mercantile business based in Philadelphia, iron furnaces in the New Jersey Pine Barrens and in southern Delaware and maintained a country house and farm in Monmouth County, N.J. The papers document his varied business interests, especially iron manufacture and sales. There are smaller quantities of papers from his wife, sons and grandson.

Papers of four generations of the Wright family of Monmouth County, New Jersey, and Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, particularly of Samuel G. Wright (1781-1845), Philadelphia merchant and general entrepreneur, and his son, Harrison Gardiner Wright (1810-1885), a gentleman farmer.

The Wurts family were involved in the anthracite coal industry. In 1823 four brothers: Maurice Wurts (1783-1854), William Wurts (1788-1858), Charles Stewart Wurts (1790–1859), and John Wurts (1792-1861) founded the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company originally to mine anthracite coal and transport the resource to New York. The company built the Delaware and Hudson Canal and later became the Delaware and Hudson Railway. The Wurts family papers were collected by John Sparhawk Wurts (1876-1958) and reflect both family papers and business records.

The Wyomissing Development Company was a housing development firm for the employees of a manufacturer of knitting machinery, the Textile Machine Works. Both companies were incorporated by Henry Janssen (1866-1948) and Ferdinand Thun (1866-1948). The collection contains two minute books which document the organization of the Wyomissing Development Company, the acquisition of land for the company town and other public facilities including stores, parks, playgrounds, schools, and hospitals.

The Young and McAllister families were prominent families in the Associate Presbyterian community in Philadelphia. William Young (1755-1829) was a Philadelphia bookseller and later a manufacturer at Rockland, Delaware. John McAllister Jr. (1786-1877) ran the Philadelphia optical firm of that same name. This small collection of papers relate to the Young, McAllister, and Warner families. Approximately half of the material are correspondence from John Young, William Young, John McAllister Jr., and Joseph T. Warner; the other half are miscellaneous documents related to the families and businesses they were involved with including Rockland Manufacturing Company and McAllister Spectacle Company.