Finding Aids

The Antietam Woolen Manufacturing Company was a small textile mill in Funkstown, Maryland, and operated a domestic store in Hagerstown. The collection contains an incomplete record of a small textile mill company in the early nineteenth century. The records include bills, orders, accounts, inventories, and cost estimates. Of particular interest are a series of reports on visits to similar mills operated by Du Pont, Bauduy & Company near Wilmington, Delaware, and by Fisher & Gougher in Germantown, Pennsylvania, with notes on workers, machinery, and administrative methods.

The firm of E.C. Beetem & Co. was established in 1901, incorporated as E.C. Beetem & Son, Inc. in 1923, and for a time was one of the leading carpet manufacturers in the United States. The company employed women in the finishing and materials departments, in the office, and at home assembling rag rugs; men were employed as weavers. This collection includes administrative records, correspondence with customers, selling agents, and rag dealers which document marketing strategies and pricing. Also included in this collection are some samples and drawings of rug patterns.

Joseph Bancroft (1803-1874), an Englishman trained in textile weaving in Lancashire, established his own cotton mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington in 1831. The operation became the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company in 1889. The photographs consist of images related to the Joseph Bancroft & Sons textile mills in the Rockford and, later, Kentmere areas on the banks of the Brandywine River. These images include plant exteriors and interiors, officials and employees, aerials, workers' housing, machinery, floods, and dams and races on Brandywine Creek.