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. "A Century of Fine Cloth, 1831-1931" is a typescript history of the first 100 years of the company, with emphasis on the personal life of the company's founder, Joseph Bancroft (1803-1874), and his immediate successors.

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 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 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.

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.

The Berkshire Knitting Mills were once part of a triad of companies in Reading and Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, owned by Henry Janssen (1866-1948) and Ferdinand Thun (1866-1949), known as Wyomissing Industries, which also included the Textile Machine Works and the Narrow Fabric Company. Built and incorporated between 1892 and 1906, these companies expanded rapidly between 1900 and 1930, becoming the world’s largest manu­facturer of women’s hosiery. This item is a bound album of documentation and captioned photographs depicting the Berkshire Knitting Mills factory, workers, and manufacturing processes in the years 1906 to 1923, a period during which the mills were celebrated as the largest full-fashioned knitting mills in the world.

Donald Robert Hull (1911-1995) was a longtime employee at the DuPont Company mainly working with nylon and textile fibers. The collection consists of four scrapbook albums of material from Donald Hull's career with the Du Pont Company.

In 1952, the DuPont Company created the Product Information section within the Public Relations department. Its function was to produce news releases with photographs about DuPont and its products for indirect publicity and advertising purposes. This collection contains photographs of DuPont Company corporate events and proceedings, product trade shows and fairs, development and manufacturing processes, and the employees and facilities where the products were created. Most of the photographs were taken from the 1930s through the 1950s.

The Textile Fibers Department of the DuPont Company, established in 1936 as the Rayon Department, specialized in researching and developing synthetic fibers for fabrics such as Rayon, Nylon, Teflon, Corian, and Kevlar. This collection primarily contains video tapes (VHS and U-Matic). Most of the content on the VHS videotapes are different than that on the U-Matic videotapes, there are a few duplicate videos that are in both formats. The videotapes content are employee training videos related to management, customer service and safety, as well as, informational videos about product and services, company history and events. Additionally the collection contains photographs, slides, advertising and promotional materials.

Corfam® was a synthetic substitute for leather. Collection consists of photographs related to the development and manufacture of DuPont's Corfam® synthetic leather at the Newburgh, New York Corfam® pilot plant and research facility.

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.

The Neoprene B plant was located at DuPont's Deepwater Point, New Jersey site, which was later named the Chambers Works. This collection consists of three panoramic photographs showing the construction of the Neoprene B plant.

In 1927 the DuPont Company constructed a plant to manufacture viscose rayon. This panoramic photograph depicts an overview of the DuPont Company's Spruance Plant in Richmond, Virginia.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was organized in Paris in 1801 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. The collection contains insurance policies with the Union Insurance Company of Philadelphia, Delaware Fire Insurance Company, Wilmington Fire Insurance Company, and the Columbia Insurance Company of Philadelphia. The policies generally cover shipments of saltpeter, gunpowder, goods and merchandise, and the cotton factory Henry Clay Mill.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company that began manufacturing gunpowder in 1802, and is commonly known as the DuPont Company. In 1941, the Martinsville Plant opened in Martinsville, Virginia, as DuPont's second nylon hosiery manufacturing plant. This small collection consists primarily of aerial and exterior photographs of the Martinsville Plant from the factory's construction in 1940 to 1996, two years before its closing.

The Granite Manufacturing Company of Maryland was a cotton factory on the Patapsco River. This collection contains a minute book of the company that covers 1844 to 1861.

Harvey Bounds (1893-1982) was the unofficial historian for Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company. The Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety of cotton-made goods along the Brandywine River in Wilmington, Delaware. This collection is comprised of four reports Bounds collected regarding the history of the company.

John Zimmermann & Sons, Inc. was a manufacturer of upholstery fabrics in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for more than fifty years. This collection consists primarily of financial records from the company's founding through its sale to Merion Securities, Inc. It contains rich payroll and pension data of potential interest to labor historians. The collection also contains records from Zimmermann Mills, Inc. and J-Z, Inc., a division of Merion Securities. These materials are also primarily financial in nature.

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.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety cotton-made goods. A panoramic view of Bancroft Mills in Wilmington, Delaware.

A small sample of engineering sketch sheets from a large Wilmington, Delaware, cotton textile and textile finishing firm.

Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company began operation in 1831 as a cotton cloth manufacturer in Rockford, Delaware. After the American Civil War, the company concentrated on finishing cotton cloth, purchasing the Kentmere Mills adjoining their original site in 1895 and a third plant for manufacturing at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1910. The company acquired another textile firm, the Eddystone Manufacturing Company, in 1925. This collection comprises records from both the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company and the Eddystone Manufacturing Company, along with records from several predecessors and subsidiaries. The Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company records trace the firm's history from 1831 through 1961, with the Managing Director's letter books, in particular, giving a very detailed picture of the company's operations. The records of the Eddystone Manufacturing Company and its predecessors are relatively complete and offer a good picture of a medium-sized textile firm that was typical of the mid-Atlantic states.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts was a membership organization of Philadelphia's political, mercantile, and manufacturing elite to promote the causes of domestic manufacturers, particularly textiles. The Pennsylvania Manufacturing Society accounts include a ledger of both the general and special accounts of the manufacturing fund. The bulk of the transactions are from the period of active operations, with the settlement of accounts taking place between 1790 and 1801.

The Textile Machine Works began as a braiding machines repair and replacement company for German imported equipment, but they began building their own braiding machines in late 1892. In the 1900s the company assembled the first American full-fashioned knitting machine (full-fashioned is a knitted garment shaped or seamed to fit close to the body). The Textile Machine Works was founded by Henry Janssen (1866-1948) and Ferdinand Thun (1866-1949) on July 5, 1892, in Reading, Pennsylvania. This collection consists of photographs depicting views of the Textile Machine Works that document plant operations, technology, and the company town. There are numerous photographs of machines made by the company in their own foundry, primarily the "Reading" full-fashioned knitting machine; many of these have been retouched for use in trade catalogs.

The Whitaker family of Philadelphia founded and operated William Whitaker & Sons, Inc., one of the oldest Philadelphia textile mills. The collection consists of photographs related to the family of William Whitaker. A number of the photographs feature buildings and bridges in and around Cedar Grove, Pennsylvania, now a part of Philadelphia. William Whitaker's mansion is featured in several of these images, with family gathered on the porch.

William H. Horstmann & Sons was a manufacturer and retailer of silk products for civilian and military clothing between 1815 and 1940. This item is a steel engraving by Samuel Sartain of the William H. Horstmann & Sons manufactory and sales room building in Philadelphia.