Peter Arnold Karthaus (1765-1840) established a mercantile business in Baltimore trading with Germany, Holland, France, and the Caribbean. The receipt book was kept by a member of P.A. Karthaus & Company at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and mostly deals with payments to individuals, pilots, and other laborers, engaged in Karthaus's arking business, typically wages, meals, boarding costs, and transportation back upstream.

The Warner Company produced lime, sand, and gravel, as well as products derived from those raw materials, such as hydrated lime for agricultural, chemical, construction, and domestic use, plaster, masonry, cement, and concrete. This collection consists of photographs, negatives, advertisements, lantern slides, 35mm slides, and albums from the Warner Company from about 1900 through 1970; the bulk of the material dates to about 1925 to 1955.