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.

The Delaware Antiques Show includes guest speakers and antique dealers to display American antiques and decorative arts. Arminda du Pont (1927-1997) was the founder and the first chairperson of the Delaware Antiques Show. Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1869) was a major collector of American decorative arts, his home, became the Winterthur Museum in 1951. This collection includes one candid photograph of Arminda du Pont (Mrs. E. I. du Pont) and Henry Francis du Pont at the 1967 Delaware Antiques Show.

Arnold M. Kneitel (1923-2012) worked for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Inc. in sales and corporate information. He worked on sales of mylar when it was introduced in 1954. The collection consists primarily of 35mm slides of displays, advertisements, and presentations on mylar, including its use in electronic equipment and, primarily in magnetic tape for information processing equipment.

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.

Arthur Wood Tocher (1919-2005) was a transportation history enthusiast, specializing in large vehicles with an emphasis on trucks. This collection consists of truck and car related images. The bulk of the collection contains photographs that Tocher took at truck shows in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The collection also includes images of construction vehicles, postcards of classic cars, a calendar with images of classic trucks, and a large truck photograph mounted on wood.

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 Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA) was the leading organization working for the repeal of prohibition in the United States. This is a small collection of postcards or stationary cards containing anti-prohibition slogans or quotes. The items are all undated but likely date from 1930 to 1933.

Atlantic Aviation was begun by Henry Belin du Pont (1898-1970) in 1927 to provide services for business aviation. In 1948 it moved from the Du Pont Airport to the new New Castle County Airport south of Wilmington, Delaware. Soon it expanded to other airports around the country. The collection includes portraits and views of Atlantic Aviation facilities at various airports. There are also a few photographs of airplanes, including the Spirit of St. Louis.

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.

Augustus Smith (1868-1932) was a civil engineer and contractor. He held several patents for coaling machinery, such as hoists. These photographs show construction progress and completed buildings, bridges, and coaling stations. There are images of projects Smith worked on or contributed to either as a contractor or engineer. The materials are arranged by company name: Augustus Smith & Co., Bergen Point Iron Works, and Groton Bridge and Manufacturing Co.

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.

The Austin Powder Company is a Cleveland-based manufacturer of industrial explosives and provider of blasting services around North America. The company began in 1833 at a site south of Cleveland, Ohio along the Cuyahoga River. The album contains photographic prints of the Austin Powder Company's plant near Solon, Ohio, circa 1900.

Automatic Merchandising Company operated and installed vending machines. A signature product was the Auto-Snak, a set of food vending machines which dispensed soda, coffee, milk, sandwiches, soup, salads, pastries and ice cream. This album is a promotional salesman sample album of automatic food vending machines for factories, universities, and offices. The album promotes the company's Auto-Snak machines.

Avon Products, Inc. is a manufacturer and direct selling company of beauty products. It is one of the oldest direct selling companies in America. The company was founded in 1886 by David H. McConnell (1856-1937) as the California Perfume Company (CPC). McConnell established a manufacturing headquarters and research laboratory in Suffern, New York, in the 1890s. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, CPC expanded its line of products to include cosmetics, household cleaners, food flavorings, and toiletries. The collection consists of photographs, negatives, slides, films, videos and sound recordings date from 1856 to 2000. The materials depict Avon products, their manufacture, packaging and sale, Avon employees and representatives and the offices, laboratories, factories and other structures owned by Avon Products, Inc. The collection is organized into ten series: Administration, Conferences, Non-sales employees, Domestic locations, International locations, Public relations, Sales managers and representatives, Selling methods and sales aids, Company history and philosophy, and Library, music, and museum.

Avon Products, Inc., manufactures and sells beauty, household and personal care products. In 1989, ground was broken on a new distribution center and warehouse in Suwanee, Georgia. The construction of the site was completed in May 1991 and officially opened in February, 1992. This is a small collection of photographic color prints that document the construction of the Suwanee distribution and warehouse site

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.

Baldwin Locomotive Works was a manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 until 1972. The company was originally located in Philadelphia and then later moved to Eddystone, Pennsylvania. This album contains twenty two photographs of Baldwin Locomotive Works train engines, train cars, and parts. The album appears to have been created by company President S.M. Vauclain for the Trades Exhibit at the Constitutional Centennial Celebration.

Baldwin Locomotive Works was a manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 until 1972. This image shows group of about forty male employes and fifteen factory visitors or managers posed on a 8-inch (?) railway gun mount in the Eddystone, Pennsylvania, plant.

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.

Wilmington is the largest city in Delaware located on the Christiana and Brandywine Rivers. This collections contains four mounted photographic prints showing facades of Wilmington, Delaware, bank buildings

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.

Rose, Kimball & Baxter, Inc. is a wholesale hardware distributor headquartered in Elmira, New York. This item is a scrapbook titled, "Full of Household Hints for the Whole Family," compiled by Barker, Rose & Kimball. It contains circulars that the store considered to be valuable resources for up-to-date hardware information.

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.

The collection consists of photographs of feed supply stores displaying signs advertising Baugh's Fertilizer. Baugh & Sons Company was founded in 1855 and was one of the oldest and largest fertilizer manufacturers in the United States during the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.

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.

Beech-Nut Packing Company produced foods such as smoked ham and bacon. The company was founded in 1891 in Canajohaire, New York, as the Imperial Packing Co. This is a small collection of photographs that depict employees at work, many of whom are women. The images date from 1905 through the 1910s.

Craft beer is defined by the Brewers Association as being a small brewery (six million barrels of beer or less annually), independent (less than 25 percent owned by a non-craft brewer industry member), and traditional (in reference to ingredients, fermentation, flavor, and alcohol volume). This collection contains a series of interviews conducted in 2015 and 2016 on the business of craft brewing in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. The collection includes interviews with brewers and brewery owners from Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia.

Bell Telephone Company was a telecommunications company that led the Bell System of telephone services throughout North America between 1877 and 1983. This small collection of photographs documents the company's line-laying equipment and process; several images show workers driving tractors, digging trenches, and laying telephone lines. These images would be of interest to scholars of the history of technology and early telecommunications.

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.

Benjamin Ferris (1780-1867) and Thomas Parker (1761-1833) were both watchmakers in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century. These are watch papers which were inserted in early timepieces and included identifying information about the watchmakers. Each paper lists the makers' Philadelphia addresses, includes a short inventory of his goods.

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).

At the turn of the century, under the direction of Charles Schwab and Eugene Grace, Bethlehem Steel Corporation became the second largest American steel company; combined with its other venture, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., it became a leading 20th century American business. This item is a viewbook which contains exterior views of the Bethlehem Steel Works. These include numerous images of both the plant and office, most of which were taken at street level.

At the turn of the century, under the direction of Charles M. Schwab (1862-1939) and Eugene Grace (1876-1960), Bethlehem Steel Corporation became the second largest American steel company; combined with its other venture, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., it became a leading twentieth century American business. The collection includes a wide range of photography which documents the company’s long history and the breadth of its enterprises from east to west coasts and overseas. It contains eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century industrial and non-industrial images and of management and workers. As a research tool, its use will be as varied and extensive as the corporation itself was during its years as an American industrial giant.

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.