This collection contains research reports for the purpose of developing and elaborating exhibits and interpretations of the Hagley Museum. The reports were prepared by a permanent research staff and by participants in the Hagley Fellowship Program. The research reports also include scholarly articles that use Hagley's collections or are about subjects that pertain to Hagley's mission.

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.

The Klots Throwing Company was one of the largest silk manufacturers in the United States, incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1894. The collection consists of only fragmentary records from the Mills at Scranton, Carbondale, Archbald, and Forest City in the Lackawanna Valley.

Anthony C.F. Wallace (1923-2015) was an anthropology professor at the University of Pennsylvania between 1951 and 1988. The Eddystone Manufacturing Company operated a cotton prints factory in Eddystone, Pennsylvania. The company was founded, owned, and operated by the Simpson family until 1929. This small collection consists of student papers written for the course Anthropology 703 Cultural Change in the Industrial Revolution. The papers all focus on the history of the Eddystone Manufacturing Company or the Simpson family and were written in the spring of 1986.