The Allied Kid Company was a major manufacturer of kid leather and suede; it was one of the most important specialty leather firms in Wilmington. The records are a miscellaneous collection of Allied Kid Company materials preserved by Alexander Ulin of the Specialty Division of the company in Wilmington. The bulk of the records consist of laboratory and production notebooks giving chemical formulae and instructions for tanning and dyeing batches of hides, including calfskin, goatskin, and suede.

Around 1950, DuPont's Newburgh, New York, Fabrikoid laboratory began working on a non-woven fabric that would be a true leather substitute. The resulting product was marketed under the trademark "Corfam," beginning in 1965. DuPont terminated production in 1972 but licensed the technology to Poland. This small collection includes a range of documents describing the origins of DuPont's Corfam project and assessing the reasons for its failure.

The leather manufacturing firm of J.E. Rhoads & Sons grew out of an eighteenth-century tanning operation on the Rhoads family homestead in Marple, Chester County (now Delaware County), Pa. Records cover the entire history of the firm from the 1720s through the 1960s. There is also substantial information on trade organizations in the leather industry and on members of the Rhoads family.