Location:

Near Wilmington, Delaware, off Route 100 N., east on Buck Road to entrance gates. Manuscript Archives: Soda House on the lower grounds of the estate

Contact Person:

Marjorie McNinch, Reference Librarian at the Soda House

Hours:

Mon-Fri., except major holidays, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and second Saturday of each month, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Please note that you must call for manuscripts on the Friday before each Saturday opening)

Overview:

The Hagley

and manuscript collections, established in 1957 at the site of the DuPont company's original powder mills, and merged with the Longwood Library and its collections of American business archives, began with the core collections of the DuPont company. The company was founded in 1802 by Pierre S. du Pont de Nemours, who brought with him from France a substantial collection of pamphlets, political tracts, Physiocratic documents, and correspondence with political economists in France. The DuPont collections are extensive and diverse, a treasure trove for early American business, labor, financial, and social history. Over the years, Hagley has become a premier repository for records on mid-Atlantic mills, manufactures, foundries and forges, transportation, commerce, banking, and technology in the nineteenth century.

I.          Records of the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company:

These are an extensive, in-depth portrait of the company's business beginning in the early nineteenth century, starting with the organization of the company in Paris in 1801.  Financial and business negotiations, relationships with prominent developers and political leaders in America, construction of early powder mills, contracts and work relations with mechanics, methods of production, labor relations and marketing strategies, and much more are documented in great detail.

The original collection of du Pont materials was housed at the Longwood Library, at Longwood Gardens, near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and are not designated the Longwood Manuscripts at Hagley.  Another collection of papers, many dating from pre-American generations of du Pont family affairs and business and especially rich with regard to the history of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his deep connections to French physiocrats and statesmen, are designated the Henry Francis du Pont Collection of Winterthur Manuscripts.  A third collection, reaching nearly half a million items, was deposited with the Hagley Museum in 1954, and is largely the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company Records.   These three collections do not comprise all of Hagley's holdings of du Pont materials, but within them are the overwhelming majority of materials for the pre-1860 period.

A.        The Longwood Manuscripts, 1438-1954 (1,065 linear ft.)

Group 1 contains the records of Pierre Samuel de Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and describes the evolution of the firm from du Pont de Nemours, Père Fils & Co. to E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co.  The Group also contains various lists of stockholders.

Group 2 contains the personal correspondence of Victor du Pont (1767-1827), son of Pierre.  While much of the group consists of personal letters, the collection also describes the firm Victor du Pont & Co. and its financial problems.  The series also contains business papers concerning the financial establishment of the woolen factory, Du Pont, Bauduy & Co, which became Victor and Charles I. du Pont and then Charles I. du Pont & Co (1810-1856). (See below)  Some correspondence concerning the administration of the Farmers’ Bank of the State of Delaware is also included.  There is also a block of correspondence on Victor’s bankruptcy and the settlement of his debts.

Group 3 contains the personal papers of Eleuthere Irenee du Pont (1771-1834).  Letters discuss the family’s Paris printing operations, the financial affairs of Victor du Pont, as well as ancillary leather, cotton, and woolen manufacturing enterprises on the Brandywine river.  There are significantly detailed records concerning the purchase of Merino sheep for the woolen venture in association with the Du Pont, Bauduy & Co woolen factory. (see below)  Some records concerning the purchase of goods in New York and their transportation to Delaware on the schooner Betzy .  Also included are E. I. du Pont’s involvement as a director of the Bank of the Unite States (1822), his resignation from the Board of the Farmer’s Bank of Delaware (1822), his involvement in the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, and his investment in the Wilmington bridge.  Papers for 1785-1838 contain legal agreements for a Merino sheep venture, du Pont’s shares in the Wilmington & Philadelphia Turnpike Co., and the Philadelphia & Wilmington Steam Boat Co. (1829).  There are also three ledgers of household accounts, and discussion concerning the difficulty of using state bank notes (1815).

Group 5 contains records of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co collected by P. S. du Pont.  Series A includes correspondence (1802-1819) (two-thirds of it concerns 1802-1815) with over 500 firms and individuals including customers, suppliers, sales agents, shippers and merchants; also included are Accounts (1800-1894). During the War of 1812, Du Pont became a major supplier of gunpowder for the U.S. government as its total sales exceeded 500,000 pounds.  After the war the company expanded rapidly as it began selling large quantities of powder to coal mine operators and railroad entrepreneurs. The largest block of letters are to and from Anthony Girard in New York concerning the distribution of powder, acquisition of supplies and discounting of notes.  By 1813, William Cornell became du Pont’s most frequent corespondent in New York City.  Series B records cover sales and production of powder and wool, supplying the mills, construction of the mills, and payroll and real estate concerns for both the powder mill and the woolen factory, Du Pont, Bauduy & Company (see below).  Series B also contains creditors’ statements and financial statements prepared by du Pont de Nemours & Co. for European stockholders.  The letters between E. I. Du Pont and Peter Bauduy (an early partner) detail the early progress of the company, as well as the importation of Merino sheep and the formation of Du Pont, Bauduy & Company. (see below)  Of note are documents about trade with John Warner in Havana, Cuba.   Series B also contains creditors’ statements and financial statements prepared by the company for European stockholders. Many bills have been marked to distinguish which apply to the powder factory, the woolen mills, or individual accounts.  The most detailed statements of accounts are the inventories prepared in 1809 and 1814 when Bauduy renewed his partnership and then withdrew, respectively.

Group 5 Series C has papers concerning lawsuits concerning contract and land disputes.  

Group 6 (4 boxes)

Miscellaneous papers relating to the development of manufacturing enterprises such as leather tanning and the production of woolen and cotton cloth and yarn in the Wilmington area.  Firms discussed include: the Du Pont, Bauduy & Co. and its successor Victor and Charles Du Pont & Co. (1827-1856) as well as C. I. du Pont & Co.  Also, the Brandywine Mill Seat Co. (1798-1854); the A. Cardon & Co (1825-33); as well as the Rockland Manufacturing Co (1825, 1843-56).  (All of these companies are detailed further in separate entries in this survey.)

This collection contains a significant amount of material discussing the woolen factory ventures, the Du Pont, Bauduy & Co. and its successor Victor and Charles Du Pont & Co. as well as C. I. du Pont & Co.  These records discuss partners, employees, the acquisition of supplies, sales and distribution.  (See below)

Also included is the correspondence and business records of Duplanty, McCall & Co., a cotton factory in which E. I. du Pont was a principal stockholder, 1813-1837,  and of its successor, the Henry Clay Mill, 1843-1844.  Correspondence reveals sources of raw cotton supply as well as orders for spinning machinery and sale of finished cotton yarn and cloth.  Accounts and contracts for the mill are also included in the collection.  (See separate entry for additional company records)

Group 9 contains a description of imports in France (1769-1782) prepared for the du Pont company in America.

B.         The Winterthur Manuscripts Collection, 1588-1955 (156 linear feet) contains                            additional papers, largely correspondence, relating to the formation and management of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co.

Group 2 contains the personal papers of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours.  The correspondence spans his entire career and his involvement with the Physiocrats.  Of particular note, the collection of the business records of the firm of Du Pont de Nemours, Père et Fils & Co., as well as records pertaining to the Du Pont print and record shop in Paris that he had with his sons E. I. and Victor.  There are also papers reflecting efforts to develop Franco-American trade and investment, and in promoting military forces in he West Indies.

Group 4 includes Du Pont, Bauduy & Co. materials.  See Charles I. du Pont, below.

C.        The E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company Records, 1800-1905 (324 linear ft.)

detail the business activities of one of the Mid-Atlantic’s most successful early manufacturing companies.  Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1827), son of French physiocrat and statesman Pierre Samuel du Pont, emigrated to the United States in 1800 and established a black powder manufactory on the Brandywine River just north of Wilmington, Delaware.  The collection consists of correspondence, general accounts, purchasing and receiving records, sales records, production records, the founding of the company, the building and management of mills.  Supplies from around the world -- saltpeter from India, sodium nitrate from Chile, etc. -- as well as immigrant Irish labor, hours worked, and wages are recorded.

                        Supplementing this large collection is the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company

General Accounts, 1800-1903 (70 linear feet), which  contain E. I. du Pont & Co. financial records for the period 1800-1902 including Ledgers (1801-1902) and Cashbooks (1801-1902), as well as Accounts Payable and Receivable (1810-1887).  These accounts indicate sales to more than 375 firms and individuals.  Also included in this collection are the petit ledgers (1812-1902) (64 volumes) that list all employees at the company, wages, hours worked, taxes paid, boarding charges, and purchases at company store.  

The Eleuthera Bradford du Pont Collection, 1799-1834 (6.3 linear feet) contains correspondence

reflecting financial and organization difficulties in the first years of the powder mills; documents about explosions; capital loans and raw materials expenses; relations with the cotton factory under Du Planty, McCall & Co.; and business related to the woolen factory of Du Pont, Bauduy & Co.  Finally, the P. S. du Pont Office Collection, 1749-1939 (14.3 linear feet) contains letters sent (1804-1901) and received (1803-1923) by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. as well as patent records and  war correspondence about government contracts.

The E. I. du Pont Papers, 1771-1922 (8 linear feet).  Series A contains correspondence describing the founding and early operation of the powder mills on the Brandywine.  Series B includes his household accounts, bills, receipts and promissory notes.  Series D shows the company's connections to the U.S. Navy Board of Ordnance and the Frankford, Washington, and Harper’s ferry arsenals, and its government contracts that enabled the company to profit so highly in the first half of the nineteenth century.  In 1837 Henry du Pont, E.I. du Pont's son, took over the management of the company and began to rationalize the company's managerial practices.  During the Civil War the company became the largest supplier of powder to the Union Army and in the late 1860s it used its wartime profits to purchase control of many of its competitors.  This collection also contains correspondence relating to the company’s efforts to raise capital in order to expand.   

The Eleuthère Irénée Du Pont Ledger, 1814-1818 (1 vol.) shows household accounts, and efforts to raise Merino sheep, and operation of the Merino farm.  The ledger also records purchases from, and sales to, local businesses.

The Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont Papers, 1782-1838 (1.7 linear ft.) contain largely personal correspondence to his wife, father, and brother, but scholars will find valuable references to starting up leather, cotton, woolen and other manufactures on the Brandywine, as well as reflections about tariffs, agricultural improvements, and the progress of the Brandywine grist mills.  Material is useful with the records of the du Pont cotton and woolen factory operations.

While continuing to produce black powder on the Brandywine, E. I. du Pont also became involved in more diverse manufacturing.  E. I. du Pont and the company encouraged manufacturing enterprises such as leather tanning and the production of woolen and cotton cloth and yarn in the Wilmington area, including promotional efforts with the Society of the State of Delaware for the Promotion of American Manufacturers.  In association with the Du Pont, Bauduy & Co woolen factory, E. I. du Pont imported Merino sheep to Delaware and established a woolen mill on the Brandywine.  See below.

The P. S. du Pont Office Collection, 1749-1939 (14.3 linear feet) contains incorporation papers and partnership agreements for associated textile and leather operations.  While these business letters and correspondence are quite limited, they do reveal the development of industry on the nineteenth century Brandywine River, and the number of endeavors in which E. I. du Pont became involved.  

All of E. I. du Pont’s ventures were not successful, however.  Du Pont supplied the capital and site for the firm Duplanty, McCall & Co. to establish a cotton manufactory on the Brandywine River in 1813.  The manufactory prospered at first as du Pont has secured the U. S. Army as its main customer.  However, with the end of the War of 1812, a flood of cheap British textiles and the Panic of 1819 caused a shutdown in 1819.  Accounts and contracts for the mill, letters documenting construction of the mill as well as correspondence that reveals sources of raw cotton supply as well as orders for spinning machinery and sale of finished cotton yarn and cloth are included in the Du Planty, McCall & Company.  Records, 1813-1844 (0.5 linear feet).  Also included are letters documenting the employment of bleachers and dyers including an employee list giving occupations and wages.  Additional records of this company are located in Group 6 of The Longwood Manuscripts, 1438-1954.  The Weaver’s books for the years 1817-1819 are included in the P. S. du Pont Office Collection, 1749-1939 (14.3 linear feet).

            E. I. du Pont’s business activities extended to transportation and financial ventures (see Group 3 of The Longwood Manuscripts).  E. I. du Pont became an investor with the Wilmington & Philadelphia Turnpike Co., the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, the Wilmington bridge, and the Philadelphia & Wilmington Steam Boat Co (1829).  E. I. du Pont’s 1822 appointment as a director of the Bank of the United States confirmed his status as both a leading businessman, industrialist and public figure until his death in 1834.

D.        Charles I. du Pont (1797-1869) was the eldest son of Victor Marie du Pont,

nephew of E. I. du Pont.  After graduating from Mt. Airy College, he joined his father, Victor, in one of the first woolen manufactories in the Delaware River Valley: DuPont, Bauduy & Co.  Victor de Pont, E. I. du Pont, Peter Bauduy organized the firm of Du Pont, Bauduy & Company, and Raphael Du Planty as partners in 1810 to manufacture woolen cloth.  They built a mill at Louviers, Delaware on the Brandywine River.  The mill produced high quality wool using the Merino sheep that E. I. du Pont had imported beginning in 1801.  The company was involved in a series of financial disputes and dissolved itself to form partnership of Victor & Charles du Pont & Co on February 25, 1815.

The Du Pont, Bauduy & Company, Records, 1809-1815 (.25 linear feet) consists of letters written by the partners and employees relating to the price of sheep and wool, sales of merinos, sources of funds, labor supplies and sales of cloth.  And the role of the factory in the development of the woolen mill.  Also, information on employees—such as dyers and apprentices, as well as on credit production of raw wool.  Victor & Charles du Pont & Co. continued until the death of Victor du Pont in 1827, when the firm became Charles I. du Pont & Co.  The Charles I. du Pont & Company, Records, 1810-1856 (8 linear feet) detail the firms efforts to produce wool at both the Louviers mill and at another Brandywine mill acquired in 1839, Rokeby.  This collection includes correspondence from commission agents, suppliers of wool, dyes and machinery as well as information regarding factory employees.  The collection also contains correspondence that concerns military contracts obtained by the company to supply blankets.  Finally, general accounts, journals, daybooks, ledger and bills payable are included as well as sales and production records.

Four other collections contain material about Charles I. du Pont & Co. or one of its earlier incarnates.  The Charles I. du Pont Papers 1807-1892 (.66 linear feet), contain correspondence, accounts, notes, a list of employees and the details of a subscription drive for a fund to aid a fellow worker.  The Victor du Pont Papers, 1753-1847 (3 linear feet), contain some of the business records for Du Pont Bauduy & Co. and its successor Victor & Charles I. du Pont & Co.  The Victor Du Pont, Papers 1778-1827 (.5 linear feet) consists of the contracts and apprenticeship papers for Victor and Charles I. du Pont, cloth manufacturers.  And in The Longwood Manuscripts, Group 2, are business papers on Du Pont, Bauduy & Co, and its successors Victor and Charles I. du Pont and then Charles I. du Pont & Co.

Not only was Du Pont an active businessman, like many successfully nineteenth century entrepreneurs, he was active in civic and political affairs as well as remaining a lifelong businessman.  He was a trustee of the Brandywine Manufacturers' Sunday School, beginning in 1817, he was elected a director of the Farmers Bank of the State of Delaware, at Wilmington, in 1830 and served as president of the bank from 1865 to 1868.  Additionally, he served two terms in the Delaware Senate, 1841-45 and 1853-57.

While serving as a civic and political leader, Charles du Pont continued to engage in business, including founding the New Castle Manufacturing Co. (1833) which manufactured cotton, woolen, and metal goods.  In 1853 he incorporated and then served as director for the Delaware Railroad Company.  Exhibit of the affairs of the Delaware Railroad Company, November, 1854 (1 book) summarizes the Railroad’s affairs.  Later in life, he was also a director of the Columbia Insurance Co. of Philadelphia, and of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore Railroad Co., as well as a vice president of the Delaware Improvement Association.

                        The Charles I. Du Pont & Company Records, 1810-1856, representing the

company that succeeded Du Pont, Bauduy & Co., and then succeeded Victory & Charles du Pont & Co. (1815-1827) until Victor's death in the latter year, detail production of wool at the Louviers mill after 1827 and at the Rokeby mill after 1839. This collection includes correspondence from commission agents, suppliers of wool, dyes and machinery as well as information regarding factory employees.  The collection also contains correspondence about military contracts obtained by the company to supply blankets.  Finally, general accounts, journals, daybooks, ledger and bills payable are included as well as sales and production records.

II.         COMMERCE

Among prominent merchants in Philadelphia in the first post-Revolutionary generation were Etienne (later Stephen) Dutilh and John Godfried Wachsmuth.  Dutilh haled from a far-flung family of merchants stretching through Holland, England, the West Indies, and southern Europe.  While Dutilh travelled and kept the European portions of their trading empire together, Wachsmuch extended connections in America.  The Dutilh & Wachsmuth Records, 1772-1875 (5 linear ft.), document the activities of this partnership, which operated from 1790 to 1799, and the subsequent partnership of Wachsmuth with John Soullier, a correspondent of Dutilh, until 1814.  These records are a compilation of numerous earlier accessions.  

Accessions 95, 1003, and 1144 contain the Business Papers, 1783-1814 (21 vols., plus 6 loose items), including Letterbooks 1794-1814, with correspondence to merchants in numerous countries throughout the Atlantic world who traded in coffee, indigo, flour, cotton wool, silk, logwood, butter, lard, glassware, china, drugs, and implements; Foreign Accounts, 1783-1801, with invoices to and from Rotterdam, Hamburg, Nantes, Bordeaux, London, Part-au-Prince, Lisbon, and other ports regarding trade in cheese, coffee, wine, glassware, hides, earthenware, and other dry goods, plus sugar, indigo, and rice from southern and Caribbean ports; and Philadelphia Account Books, 1788-1808 (6 vols.); and numerous Checkbooks, Notes, Drafts, 1789-1811, which document orders for payment, drawback on trade, Bank of the United States business, customs declarations, and other affairs.   

Accession 656, Dutilh & Wachsmuth, Miscellaneous Papers, 1780-1811 (141 items) contains bills, receipts for purchases, bills for ship supplies, drafts on Philadelphia and foreign merchants, and other business papers.

Accession 470 contains the partners' bankbook with the First Bank of the U.S.   

Accession 706, Miscellaneous Papers, 1778-1818 (392 items), contains bills, receipts, orders, invoices, and other commercial accounts of  the different partnerships with a number of foreign firms.  

Accession 720, Miscellaneous Papers, 1772-1846 (500 items), contains invoices, bills of exchange, orders, insurance papers, and much correspondence with French, Caribbean, and Dutch merchants.  

Accession 470 is the Dutilh & Wachsmuth Bank Book, 1797-1800 (1 vol.) with the Bank of the United States branch in Philadelphia.

Accession 1120 contains insurance policies with West Indian merchants for 1788 to 1799.  

Accession 1215 consists of legal papers related to the case of the "Eliza," and Dutilh's charges that his supercargo took contraband coffee out of Cuba and violated his orders.

Accession 1220 contains letters and accounts related to Amsterdam and Haitian trade, an account of the Spanish massacre of French islanders in 1794, and the dissolution of Dutilh's branch in Santo Domingo in 1793.  

Accessions 1247 and 1369 cover various years of  1783 to 1806 matters of provisioning ships, repairs, cargo lists, wage payments, insurance papers, and port fees.   In all, these materials represent a treasure trove about commerce in the early republic, and include business relations with dozens of the most prominent partnerships and firms in the Atlantic world during the 1790s.  Researchers will find additional documents related to Dutilh & Wachsmuth at HSP, LC, NYHS, the Clements Library, and the Wisconsin Historical Society.  Please note that most materials are in French, and some are in German and Spanish.

Another prominent, long-term partnership was that of Samuel Massey (1734-1793) and Benjamin Mifflin (1718-1787).  The Mifflin and Massey Records, 1751-1863 (.6 linear ft.) show extensive commercial activity starting in the 1750s between Samuel Massey with Jonathan Mifflin, including Account Books for 1751-1755, 1760-1761, 1756, 1757, 1759, detailing imports of coffee, flour, sugar, corn, rum, tea, chocolate, rice and other coastwise trade commodities.  Numerous additional accounts with Philadelphia retailers and wholesalers are also in the collection, and of special interest are the joint ventures to export flour, cloth, salt, clothing, rice, brandy, coffee, spices, cotton, and other goods to the West Indies and coastal North American ports.  A summary of partners' balances for 1766-1766 is in this collection as well.  The partnership agreement of 1760 is included, as well as insurance papers for trips to Europe and the West Indies, and a few notations dating from 1778 about Continental currency troubles.  

Andrew Clow & Company, Records, 1784-1835, (420 items) contain a variety of papers which document the business activities of the Philadelphia mercantile firm of Andrew Clow & Company of which Andrew Clow and David Cay were partners.  This firm, active beginning with the close of the Revolutionary War, conducted trade with merchants in great Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the West Indies as well as with a variety of American ports.  A variety of accounts, bills, orders, receipts, and correspondence reveal that the Company exported or re-exported flour, grain, sugar, coffee, mahogany, and tobacco while importing a variety of textiles, wine and other luxury goods from Europe.  These documents, in turn, show the firms connections to merchants throughout the West Indies and Europe.  Also included among the records are several insurance documents relating to policies the company took out on ships and their cargo.  Correspondence also includes observations on market conditions, data on trade in wine and brandy with France and a discussion with James Matthews (1790) concerning the proper type of barrel in which to ship flour.  A selection of eighteenth century bank notes from various American cities, including the First Bank of the United States, may be of particular interest to scholars of early monetary history.  Clow and Cay both died in Philadelphia’s great yellow fever epidemic in 1793 and much of the documents in this collection pertain to the settling of their estates.  See also the District Court of Pennsylvania, Eastern District Equity Docket and Case Files, 1790-1847 (23 reels microf.).

During the first post-Revolutionary decade, immigrant merchants with connections at numerous foreign ports were able to rise quickly in American cities.  Lynch & Stoughton Ledger, 1783-1788 (New York City) (1 vol.) demonstrates how Dominick Lynch, Sr., an Irish merchant immigrant, and Thomas Stoughton, Spanish consul in the city, expanded quickly to embrace the commerce of Spain, Portugal, Havana, Florida, Ireland, the Low Countries, and even China.  They exported flour, grain, timber products, tobacco, ginseng, flax seed, potash, and numerous local products of New York; imports included wine, linen, sugar, molasses, brandy, and textiles.

The Joshua Gilpin Letters, 1798-1803 contain a report on market conditions and prices at Philadelphia during 1803 for ports around the world.  The Joshua Gilpin Journals and Notebooks, 1790-1833 (3 reels microf.) record the progression of a merchant into paper manufacturing (see "Manufactures").  Joshua Gilpin, born in Philadelphia in 1765, inherited his father Thomas's flour mills in Maryland and Delaware (see "Milling") during the American Revolution. In 1787 he established his first paper mill near Wilmington with his brother Thomas, Jr. (1776-1853) and other relatives.  There is little explicitly about commerce in these records, but the assiduous scholar will find valuable details about trade in France and England, prices, and market conditions abroad while Joshua was travelling in 1795 to 1801.

            Another prominent family of Philadelphia merchants in the late-colonial and early national era were the Phillips.  The Phillips Family Business Records, 1793-1838 (6 vols.) detail commercial activities of William Phillips (1771-1845), a third-generation head of this prominent merchant family.  Phillips’s grandfather John (1702-1762) and father John, Jr. (1739-1806) ran a prosperous ropewalk, and William clerked for George Meade before entering the import business on his own account.  William Phillips traded to France and the West Indies primarily, but expanded to include southern Europe and the "spice islands" of the Far East.  His exports were largely wheat and flour, and smaller quantities of agricultural semi-processed foods.  His son and grandson moved out of commerce and became manufacturers, sugar refiners,  and cotton mill operators (see "Manufacturers" below)  One of his four account books in this collection detail ventures to the Caribbean, Canton, Dunkirk, Morocco, and Calcutta (1793-1807); another involves household accounts for payments to servants and farm laborers, including names, days worked, wages paid, etc. (1808-1818), and an account of  a voyage to London and Guernsey in 1795-1796.  A third, the Riverside Farm Accounts (1821-1830), document production and sales of butter, port, cider, eggs, and sales of manure, livestock, and cordwood that may have been delivers to Phillips.  The fourth account book is that of William Phillips in retirement as a gentleman farmer (1826-1838).  

            In the Phillips Family Business Records there is a Receipt Book of Francis Coppinger (1795-1796) that shows involvement in the wine, sugar, and cotton importing business, and part-ownership of brigs.  Coppinger was primarily a wine importer in Philadelphia.

            Manuel Eyre Business Papers, 1796-1815 (332 items) include the shipping records of this important Philadelphia Quaker merchant.  Manuel Eyre, Sr. (1736-1805), father of the main subject in the documents, was a shipwright in Philadelphia.  The son, Manuel Eyre, Jr. (1777-1845) clerked for Henry Pratt, Charles Massey, Jr., and Abraham Kintzing; in 1803 he formed the partnership Eyre & Massey that lasted until his death.  The partners owned over 20 barques, sloops, and ships; their trade spanned to Europe, the Caribbean, South America, China, Indian, and the Far East.  Most of this collection consists of letters, ship manifests, records of voyages, bills of lading, and bills of sales for vessels.  See also records of the Schuylkill Navigation Company and the Second Bank of the United States.

            In a related collection the Manuel Eyre Shipping Papers, 1801-1803 (322 items), letters and ship manifests document additional voyages of the partnership's vessels, including balance sheets, cargo lists, outfitting lists, contracts with captains, correspondence with foreign agents and supercargoes, and the like.  Eyre & Massey imported primarily cotton, sugar, coffee, hardware, textiles, hides, wine, rum, Windsor chairs, and rice; they exported mainly flour, butter, cheese, and gunpowder.  In a third collection, Manuel Eyre Business Papers, 1796-1834 (5 items), additional evidence of Caribbean voyages and Eyre's shipments of coffee are documented.  A fourth collection Manuel Eyre Business Papers, 1796-1837 (43 items) supplements these kinds of voyages, including correspondence with West Indies agents, accounts payable in 1803, promissory notes, bank drafts, bills of lading and other shipping papers.  Finally, the Manuel Eyre Business Papers, 1801-1823 (10 items) are shipping papers, bills of lading, and customs house lists of imports.  

            The Irving Warner Papers, 1794-1964 (5.8 linear ft.) include important information about one line of sloops and barques that moved coal, lime, and sand out of Pennsylvania to Wilmington and ports beyond, and the importing of Portland cement from Europe during the era covered by this survey.  The papers include mainly retrospective and historical accounts of the original family members involved in this trade.

            Hagley has a microform copy of Thomas Pim Cope, Diaries, 1800-1851 (1 reel, 10 vols.), made from the originals held by Haverford College Library (see Haverford entries).

            Within the very large collection of the Morris Family Papers, 1684-1935 (10.5 linear ft.) are numerous materials of Samuel Morris (1734-1812), a fourth-generation descendant of Anthony Morris, who arrived in Philadelphia in about 1685.   Although most generations of Morris's maintained prosperous breweries in the city and land investments in the hinterlands (see "Manufacturing"), Samuel Morris turned to commerce before the American Revolution, served in political posts during the war and as the Commissary General of the Middle District.  Hagley holds numerous account books, bank books, correspondence with merchants in New York, bills, war accounts for hospital and provisioning duties, papers related to commerce during the Revolution with his brother Israel Morris and the firm of Morris & Miercken, merchants and sugar refiners.  Researchers will find accounts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania physicians during the war, as well as records of slave sales in Trenton, New Jersey in 1781, and loans Samuel Morris made to the Batsto Iron Works.   See related materials at HSP.

            A single Sweetman & Rudolph, Account Book, 1788-1796 (1 vol.) covers the flour business of the important Philadelphia merchants, Richard Sweetman and John Rudolph, who were connected in business to Willing, Morris & Swanwick during these years.  

            Joseph Donath & Company, Letter Books, 1801-1806 (2 vols.) document a Philadelphia merchant firm's correspondence in the first generation after the Revolution with dozens of  Americans and Europeans who traded in glassware, textiles, flour, brandy, tobacco, earthenware, hardware, and provisions.  Interests in rebellious Santo Domingo and exotic China are also documented, as well as trips to Puerto Rico, Havana, Baltimore, Liverpool, Bordeaux, and other Atlantic ports.  

            The Joseph Shipley Papers, 1741-1898 (1.2 linear ft.) supplement the extensive family records of the Shipleys of Wilmington, Delaware.  Joseph was the grandson of  the prominent Brandywine miller, Thomas Shipley (see "Milling"), and great-grandson of William Shipley, who established the family in Philadelphia beginning in 1725.  Joseph began his career in 1813 as a clerk in his cousin, Samuel Canby, Jr.'s business in Philadelphia.  By 1822, Joseph had removed to Liverpool, where he served in Shipley, Welsh & Company as a agent to ship cotton and arrange credit for his partner John Welsh in Philadelphia.  In 1826 Joseph became a partner in the famous William & James Brown and Company banking firm (a branch of Alexander Brown & Sons of Baltimore).  By 1836 Joseph was a partner in all four banking branches.  (see "Panic of 1837")  Hagley holds an extensive correspondence sent to Joseph while he lived in Liverpool, including numerous letters about milling in the early 1800s from his father and brother on the Brandywine River, and an equally large number of letters from Richard Price and Thomas S. Newlin, merchants in Philadelphia, about exporting and the approaching financial crisis of 1837.  A substantial number of letters from the various Brown banking offices are within the collection as well.  Specific commercial accounts include an Account Book (1819-1820) for a trip to Maryland and Virginia; financial records covering a trip to france; Ledger, Shipley, Welsh & Co. (1825-1826); Accounts, John Welsh (1819-1826), including shipments of cotton and flour to Europe; Balance Sheet (1827); Brown & Sons, annual losses and gains (1815-1831); Private Balance Sheet  (1836, 1849); Accounts, Brown, Shipley & Co. (1843-1849, 1853-1862), Accounts, Brown Bros. & Co. (1843-1849, 1853-1861); statement on the American cotton crop (1839); miscellaneous insurance premiums, bills of exchange, and receipts.  From Joseph's father, Joseph Shipley Sr., there is a volume of Household Accounts (1824-1829), and his will.  Further activities of Joseph Shipley are document in the Brown Brothers, Harriman & Co. Records, NYHS.

            Masters & Markoe Records, 1800-1855 (5.5 linear ft.) provide a valuable portrait of the West Indies trade of New York merchants in the new nation.  Thomas Masters formed a partnership with his brother-in-law Francis Markoe in 1810, but they suffered serious setbacks during the War of 1812 and dissolved the business in 1814.  The partnership resumed in New York from about 1825 to 1836, when the firm became Masters, Markoe & Co., and included at various times their sons, Samuel Caldwell Masters and Francis Markoe, Jr., and a son-in-law of Masters, Jeremiah Wilbur, staying in business until it transformed once again in 1846.  Partners imported primarily sugar from St. Croix (Santa Cruz), and rum, coffee, mahogany, logwood, molasses, and cotton wool from various islands; they exported flour and West Indies goods to Germany and France.  Most of the documents are loose letters.  See also Masters & Markoe, HSP.

            The Karthaus Family Records, 1794-1966 (1.3 linear ft.) give valuable insights into the rise of Baltimore in the early republic.  Peter A. Karthaus, Sr. (1765-1840) came from Hamburg to Baltimore in roughly 1806 and establish commerce with Germany, Holland, France, and the West Indies. Unlike many merchants who suffered during the War of 1812, Karthaus operated a dozen or so privateers to West Indies ports.  Karthaus also expanded into real estate purchases and coal extraction from southwestern Pennsylvania before the war's end.  Shipping Invoices (1806-1814) link Karthaus to imports and reexports of coffee, cotton, sugar, and tobacco from Baltimore to Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Bremen, Havana, and Puerto Rico.  A business diary written by Frederick Focke, son-in-law of Karthaus, explains details of a trading venture to Holland and England in 1847-1849, including statistics of the tobacco trade, and an attached schedule of tobacco exports from the U.S. for 1843-1847.  See also Peter A. Karthaus & Company Account Books, Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis, Maryland.

            Andrews and Meredith Records, 1780-1832 (34 items) comprise the correspondence and legal papers of merchants Robert Andrews and David Meredith between 1794 and 1802.  Especially important are the shipping records during the early years of the French Revolution, including trade with France and Portugal in such items as wine, brandy, cotton, sugar, indigo, spices, and cotton wool.  Details of a 1794-1795 voyage, including cargoes sent, problems encountered, and the ensnaring debts that resulted is included.  See also Jonathan Meredith ("Other Manufactures"), David's father in Philadelphia.  See also Andrews & Meredith, HSP.

            It is rare that scholars can glimpse the relations between farmers, small merchants of lesser towns, and the great merchants of port cities.  The Stockley Family Papers, 1811-1913 (5.5 linear ft.) offer such a glimpse.  Ayres Stockley formed a partnership in 1823 with Samuel  J. Rowland in Smyrna, Delaware, which continued under various names until 1836.  Account books record the acquisition of wheat, barley, and hides, and their shipment from Delaware to Philadelphia; the travels of their sloop the "William Penn," (1829-1832), and payments to workers (1826-1831). Starting in the 1870s there are additional "grain dealer" records, diaries, and rent ledgers.

            In the Stockley Family Papers there are other items of commercial significance for these years.  See the Account Book of Lewis Fields for labor, groceries, and sundries (1824-1826); the Ledger of William Fields (1813-1833); Day Book (1825-1830); Debts Due (1830-1833); Ledger of lumber accounts of William Daniel of Smyrna (1853-1859); Receipt Book of Daniel (1875-1886); Accounts of William A. Cloud, Smyrna for ship repairs (1859-1862).

            The George Bowen & Company Records, 1829-1898 (1.75 linear ft.) give important perspectives on both retail and wholesale trade.  Bowen, a ship chandler in Newport, Rhode Island from 1829, expanded to transshiping coal from Pennsylvania and cordwood from around New Jersey and Pennsylvania by the 1850s.  He took on commission trade with homeowners, merchants, and shopkeepers from New York to Philadelphia; his vessels carried rope, bar iron, turpentine, white lead, tar, oil, pork, flour, oats, coffee, cloth, and other farm items, as well as large shipments of coal.  There are sixteen volumes of account books in this collection.

Joseph Bancroft, textile manufacturer, corresponded with Pitcher & Brown, Pawtucket, MA, among others; their correspondence appears in Joseph Bancroft, Letterbook, 1833-1839 (1 vol).

Henry S. Leverich Checkbook, 1830-1837 (New York) (1 vol.), records the arrivals of shipments of sugar and other West Indies and New Orleans goods, as well as loans, bank deposits, brokering fees involving numerous prominent merchants in New York, minus the years 1832 to 1835, and dealings with the Philadelphia butter merchant Israel Cook.  Leverich, and his brothers, were prominent directors of the Bank of New York by the 1840s.   

In the Wright Family Papers, 1785-1902 (16.67 linear ft.) are numerous letters and reports related to Wright's trade between 1817 and 1842.  Although progressively more an ironmaster and gentleman farmer, Samuel Gardiner Wright (1809-1845) began his career in commerce and sustained links to it by shipping Merino sheep, cordwood, sea salt, furs, and iron products from his Pennsylvania and New Jersey mining and farming operations to correspondents in Arkansas, Ohio, New York, Illinois, and backcountry Pennsylvania.  (See "Iron Works")         

Elisha Copeland was a commission merchant at Boston, Massachusetts. With P. Degrand, Copeland traded with Europe, the West Indies, and the du Ponts of the Brandywine.  The single Account Book, 1824-1825 contains entries for imports of wine, brandy, sulphur, cocoa, spices, coffee, cigars, horsehair, tobacco, hides, cotton, textiles, sugar, alum, saltpeter, gunpowder, and other goods.

Thomas Brooks, Account Book, 1859-1861 (1 vol.), recounts the drygoods trade of this merchant, especially for Calicoes, flannels, muslins, undergarments, cloaks, shawls, tablecloths, and other textiles.  Brooks hired tailors, seamstresses, possibly piece-workers, and delivery workers.      

The James J. Shryock Business Papers, 1856-1863 (.16 linear ft.) contain important information about the discovery and transhipment of petroleum from the interior of Pennsylvania to ports such as New York, Philadelphia, Bristol, London, and European cities.  Shryock began as a general merchant during the 1850s, but soon moved into railroad promotion (see "Transportation") through the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad Company of Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio.  During construction, crude oil was discovered, and soon organizing its marketing to potential buyers in America and abroad -- including the overland hauling from oil fields by rail to port cities -- became Shryock's main activity.   A Letterbook (1856-1862) details his merchant activities; a Journal (1861-1862) lists quantities of oil shipped, hiring of carters, and returns from his partners.  

            The Philadelphia merchant John Brown, who had received his training as a clerk in Robert Morris’s mercantile house in the 1760s, traded throughout the young republic as well as with Europe and the West Indies.  The John Brown, Papers, 1781-1784 (33 items) contain correspondence documenting sales of calicoes and linens to J. Nesbitt & Co. of Nantes, France, among others. Brown shipped Windsor chairs and other goods to Havana in 1783.  There are also several items of correspondence relating to his duties as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Board of War and Secretary of the Marine Committee and Board of Admiralty. (See also Andrew Clow & Company, Records, 1784-1835)  For the cotton trade, see also records of Joseph Shipley, Manuel Eyre, Mifflin & Massey, Phillips, Dutilh & Wachsmuth, Wetherill, among others.

            Scattered throughout Hagley’s collections there is correspondence written by merchant Archibald McCall (1767-1843), who was involved in the East India trade before 1800, became a director of the First Bank of the United States, and exported Du Pont powder after 1804.  He operated the Glasgow Forge near Pottstown. (See "Iron Works")   See Du Planty, McCall & Company Records, 1813-1844   (.5 linear ft.) (see "Cotton Mills"); E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Correspondence, 1805-1901, Eleuthera Bradford du Pont Collection, 1799-1834, Joseph Donath & Co., Letterbooks, 1801-1806 (2 volumes), Victor du Pont, Papers, 1753-1847 (3 linear feet), Eleuthère Irénée, Papers, 1782-1838, and Wright Family, Papers, 1785-1902 (16.67 linear feet), all detailed elsewhere.

            The William & James Prichett Records, 1816-1873 (2.2 linear ft.) document one of the most far-flung fur trading businesses in North America down to the 1830s.  From their Philadelphia shop the brothers imported from Spain, Germany, Buenos Aires, Pernambuco, Honduras, Rio de Janeiro, La Guira, and other foreign ports, as well as from the American interior to the North and South.  Their Day Books (1825-1826, 1825-1831), Journals (1829-1830, 1829-1830), Cash Books (1832-1835), Hide Accounts (1828-1829), Receipts and Sales (1824-1827, 1830)  show imports of both raw hides and finished leather.  Agents went on long buying trips for the company.  The company folded in 1835, and one of the Prichetts became involved in the grain and flour trade to Britain from roughly 1845 to 1862.  Prichett, Baugh & Company, founded in 1845, shipped wheat, flour, and clover seed to British ports, and petroleum to Liverpool in 1862, cotton, meat, hides, and flour to various ports during the 1850s.  

            The Jacob Barge Record Book, 1767-1792 (1 vol.) shows business of this Philadelphia merchant with area stores and farmers, and his supplying activities with merchant re-exporters.  The Anguera & Curren Receipt Book, 1835-1837 (1 vol.) details this shipping firm's payments for repair, towing and wharfage fees, supplies, wages, and other related services at Philadelphia.  Lesser merchant Joseph Dugan, Receipt Book, 1822-1838 (1 vol.) covers household expenses for imported furniture and wine, fuel, home repairs, and articles of consumption.  

            Most of the major millers and manufacturers in the Brandywine valley engaged in commerce, some very energetically.  For example, the Joseph Shipley Papers, 1741-1898 (1.2 linear ft.) (see "Milling") document the early career of Shipley as a merchant's clerk in London, and his subsequent activities arranging shipments of grain and flour, and then cotton and banking credit.  These papers are a deep source for understanding the connections among merchants and the relationships of credit, reputation, and profit.

            For additional information about commerce, especially its relationship to the wider activities of milling, manufacturing, and finance, see entries for "DuPlanty, McCall & Company," The Lea Mills Collection,  William Lea & Sons Records, Sweetman & Rudolph Account Book, Thomas Lea & Son Account Books, Haldeman Family Papers, elsewhere in this survey.

            For West Indies commerce, particularly Santo Domingo and Cuba, see the records of Bauduy, Dutilh & Wachsmuth, the du Ponts, Mifflin & Massey; Masters & Markoe; the Karthaus Family Records; Manuel Eyre Shipping Papers; Stevens Family Papers; Joseph Donath & Co.; Elisha Copeland Account Book; Thomas Lea & Son Account Books.  For more about the coffee trade, see the Eyre paper, Beorge Bowen & Company records, Dutilh & Wachsmuch papers, and Phillips Family Records.  For tea, see the "Catalogue of Teas," 1825, J. & W. Lippincott and Company, Auctioneers, Philadelphia (3 p.).  For sugar, see "Statistical Tables of the Consumption of Sugar in the United States," covering 1835 to 1840 (2 p.).

            Prices current lists may be found in Mercantile Miscellany, 1784-1804 (23 items) for Amsterdam and Marseilles covering 1804, and advertising circulars of a few prominent Philadelphia firms; and for a lengthy report on market conditions and prices in Philadelphia in 1803, see the Joshua Gilpin Letters (1798-1803).  Prices are also give in the C.J. Fell & Brother (Philadelphia) records, the prominent spice and chocolate importer, for 1868 and 1873.  The Philadelphia Commercial List and Price Current for 1875 is also held at Hagley, as is the "Prices Current to Druggists of wall, window, and shelf furniture," of the John M. Maris Company, 1806.

            For treatises on bookkeeping and wholesaling, see especially "A Treatise of Book-Keeping, or, Merchant Accounts," by Alexander Malcolm (1685-1763), reprinted in 1986 (148 p.); and "Course of Book-Keeping, According to the Method of Single Entry," by Charles Hutton (1737-1823), published in 1801.  See also, " Preston's Treatise on Book-Keeping: A Common-Sense Guide to a Common-Sense Mind," by Lyman Preston (1795-?), published in 1853, 1854 (224 p.).

            Numerous publications and collections on themes related to merchants' activities can be found at Hagley.  Among these are reports about the tumultuous conditions of the West Indies during the 1780s and 1790s, the embargoes of 1807-1809; the introduction of new technologies and business methods, the debates about banking and institutions to aid in internal development, debates about slavery and wage labor -- and many other topics that can be researched through the Hagley card catalogue of printed works available in the library.   In addition, scholars will find many cross-referenced names and topics throughout this collection survey.

III.       MANUFACTURING

Hagley's holdings on early manufacturing may be clustered according to the institution's primary strengths in collecting over the years.

A.                 Cotton and Woolen Mills

The earliest holdings related to textiles manufacturing at Hagley include those of Philadelphia promoters and investors during the first post-Revolutionary generation.  Taken together with related materials at the HSP and Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, Hagley's Soda House contains a number of key collections on the formation of early cotton and woolen production.

 The Samuel Wetherill Miscellaneous Papers, 1775-1803 (7 items) comprise a small, but rare early view of one of the new nation's most tenacious promoter-manufacturers.  Hagley's holdings include Wetherill's accounts as a founding official of the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufactures (1775), and records of the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and the Useful Arts, begun in 1787 in Philadelphia by prominent merchants and developers, attracted over 800 subscribers of small sums to begin spinning and weaving operations.   Records in this collection include Wetherill's reports as chairman and treasurer of the Pennsylvania Society, especially related building the cotton factory; a report on the advantages of home manufactures and putting out; receipts of subscribers to the Society; a report about the cost of cotton factory machinery dated 1793; and a letter from Tench Coxe to Wetherill about the Manufacturing Fund of 1803.

There are two other important volumes in the Hagley records:  (1) a Manufacturing Fund Ledger, 1788-1801, which portrays the capital-raising, construction, and employment records of the putting-out operations and factory production of handkerchiefs, cotton, canvas, dimity, shawls, calico, corduroy, and other fabrics.  Records are strongest for 1788-1789; included with the 1801 materials are a list of trustees and members, as well a settlement of accounts related to the Company's failures in 1789.  (2)  A Weaver's Ledger, 1788-1790 (1 vol.) details work with about 30 outwork and factory handloom weavers, including wages, costs of materials, and levels of output for piecework.  See also the Mendenhall and Cope business records for commercial ties of Wetherill.  See also related materials at HSP and the Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.

 Late in 1787 Samuel Wetherill, a prominent Revolutionary-era merchant in Philadelphia, began a putting-out system of flax and wool spinning, and within a few months began a cotton factory operation with between 40 and 80 spindles and 26 handlooms, employing 200 to 300 women.  Conflicts between home production and the factory complicated the Society's operations, and a fire in 1790 destroyed Wetherill's Market Street factory.  Wartime commerce revived merchant interests in shipbuilding and trade, and deterred further efforts at manufacturing.  However, Wetherill and others founded the Manufacturing Fund in 1803.  Hagley holds a few business letters and reports on the condition of home manufacturing and cotton production that emerged from Wetherill's entrepreneurship.  

Other Wetherill records also contain Pamphlets (1780) addressed to the public to promote factory production in the 1780s.  Some individual papers of Wetherill include connections to Tench Coxe, John Nicholson, and others identified with the Society, as well as early national economic development generally.  The records detail subscription activities, reports on labor recruitment, costs and types of factory equipment, a few spottier documents on company finances.  See also Metals and Mining, for Wetherill's early national involvement in white lead production.  The Wetherill  records also detail the work of weavers and outworkers.

During the early 1800s, the number of textile mills in the Delaware River Valley grew rapidly, as did their expansion as business enterprises absorbing available capital and labor, employment of immigrants and natively-born workers, and significance overall as economies of scale.  Hagley holds a number of complementary collections in textiles manufacturing that can be used most effectively together.  The most important of these are:

William Whitaker & Sons, Business Records and Accounts, 1809-1970 (22 linear ft.) document one Philadelphia's oldest textile mills.  Henry Whitaker, an immigrant from England, founded a mill first in England in 1796, then on the Hudson river in 1809, and finally in 1813 he set up the Cedar Grove mills on the Tacony Creek.  After his two sons, Robert and William, ran the operations for a few years, they sold out to a cousin, William Whitaker, who continued the business as William Whitaker & Sons from 1822 until 1878; the business continued in the family until 1946.  The Cedar Grove mills specialized in producting  mattress ticking by the 1840s, and woolen blankets for the army during the Civil War; thereafter, the company expanded into carpet manufacturing and purchased the Tremont Carpet Mills in Frankford.

Joseph Bancroft, Papers [size and years] is a smaller collection, but portrays company business at the Rockdale, Delaware cotton manufacturing works near Wilmington from 1831 to 1865, when Bancroft formed a partnership with his sons that continued for the next century.  The Joseph Bancroft, Letterbook, 1833-1839, covers various aspects of equipment purchases and installation, importation of cotton and shipments of finished bales of cotton to customers.  Inbound Letters, 1832-1851, and Day Books, covering years to the Civil War, outline the extent of cloth orders from Philadelphia and New York markets, and the growth of the firm during the Civil War. [For post-war manufacturing see Eddystone Manufacturing Company, Records, 1877-1959]

The Du Planty, McCall & Company Records, 1813-1844 (.5 linear ft.)  show how merchants, manufacturers, and financiers came together in the cotton spinning and weaving business during the War of 1812; their contracts with the army; their stiff competition with cheaper British imports of textiles; and their subsequent bankruptcy in the Panic of 1819.  The collection includes orders for machinery and yarn; documents about the construction of the mill, employment of bleachers and dyers; recruitment of French workers; room and board payments of workers (1815 only); and lists of occupations and wages for work done in the mill.  This mill was leased in 1843 to A. W. Adams & Company, and became known as the Henry Clay Mill thereafter.  See "Commerce" and "Eleuthera Bradford Du Pont Collection, 1799-1834".

Antietam Woolen Manufacturing Company, 1814-1843 (mostly 1814-1828), of Funkstown and Hagerstown, Maryland, contains bills, orders, accounts, and inventories, wages and work rules, and reflections on British competition.  There is not a continuous run of daybooks and record books for the firm, but a valuable picture of starting up business during the War of 1812, when blockades and embargoes gave an impetus to domestic manufacturing, is included in this collection.  Shareholders were probably local farmers who wished to fund mills and markets for their wool.  See also Hagley's holdings for Fisher & Gougher.

The Simpson & Eddyston records include accounts with farmers, factory day books, and memo books on factory production of cotton during the 1820s to 1850s.

Blockley Cotton Factory, 1819-1848 (mostly 1819-1837, when the Panic hit) [size]was established in West Philadelphia.  Researchers should supplement the materials with the more extensive holdings of Manuel Eyre, the factory's founder, housed at Hagley, HSP, and the Atheneum.     The Granite Manufacturing Company of Maryland, Minute Book, 1844-1861 shows the operations of a cotton factory on the Patapsco River across from the famous Ellicott flour mills.  The Granite Company lasted until a fire destroyed the buildings in 1868.

Prominent among early cotton manufacturers was the Phillips family, originally wholesalers in Philadelphia during the early and mid-eighteenth century.  The Phillips Family Business Records, 1793-1838 (6 vols.) are a mixture of commecial and manufacturing history over five generations.  (see “Commerce” above)  Fourth Generation John smith Phillips (1800-1876) formed various partnerships to refine suger, operate a putting out business in cotton manufacturing, and with his brother-in-law, David Lewis, and a cotton-weaving mill in 1825.  As Lewis Phillips & Co., the mill grew to 200 power looms.  A Day Book of Lewis, Phillips, and Co. (1825-1830), shows work at the cotton-weaving mill at Rockdale, Pennsylvania, and refers on occasion to the cotton mill held in Holmesburg that Lewis owned prior to the partnership with Phillips.  Included are documents about the construction of the mill, purchases of raw materials, shipment of finished cloth (sheeting, tick, calico, shirting, and other fabrics).   See also "Commerce" for the more extensive details of Phillips family trade and manufactures.  Related to the Phillips Family Business Records are the John Smith Phillips, Records, 1800-1856  cover operations of a cotton weaving mill in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania.  In 1835 the company moved operations to the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia.  

The Rockland Manufacturing Company Records, 1825-1856 (440 items) detail the operations of a cotton and woolen cloth making enterprise north of Wilmington, Delaware, especially the hiring and payment of wages to scores of men and women in 1848, and the lists of stockholders and creditors to the company.  Put under the direction of Alfred V. du Pont in 1846, the company then went bankrupt in 1848-49, and subsequently was sold to paper manufacturers associated with the du Ponts.

            Scholars will want to examine the accounts and correspondence of commission merchants and retailers [see Commerce above] for related themes of cotton and sheep importation, perceptions about the effects of manufactures on commerce, links to other American regions and foreign ports, methods of brokering and transporting southern cotton (e.g., J. W. Bacon & Co., Records), and for West Indies cotton and textiles trade.  Many commercial records (e.g., Joseph Shipley, Papers; Masters & Markoe, Records, 1793-1807; William Phillips, Account Book; Lewis, Phillips, & Co., Day Book, 1825-1830, for the Rockdale cotton factory) illustrate important connections to the cotton trade with Europe and perceptions about the Delaware River Valley's sectional relationship with southern cotton trade during the 1830s.   The John Brown Papers, 1781-1784, illustrate the trade in calicoes and linen between Philadelphia and France in the immediate post-Revolutionary years.   The Andrew Clow & Company, 1784-1835 materials, as well as those of Thomas Astley and David Cay, both linked to Clow, contain hundreds of items demonstrating the importation of calico, chintz, sheeting, worsted, and other fabrics from a variety of foreign ports.   See also references to cotton shipments and manufacture in the Du Planty & McCall Records, and the Jaret Pratt & Son Records [detailed elsewhere].

The Manuel Eyre, Business Papers, 1796-1815 (332 items), and Shipping Papers, 1801-1803 (322 items), and Business Papers, 1796-1837 (58 items), show that the varied activities of a prominent Philadelphia Quaker merchant after the Revolution had shipping interests in textiles to far-flung ports.  Eyre's papers are scattered in ten separately filed boxes and files at Hagley, all of which are indexed in the manuscript reading room guides.  Additional materials are located at HSP and the Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.

See also Agriculture and Mills for further connections.

            Holdings related to textiles manufacturing include numerous pamphlets and government documents that are listed in the card catalogues at both the Soda House and the Library.  Numerous sources on Jefferson's embargoes of 1807-09, the role of banks in the Delaware River Valley, economic up- and downturns, the fortunes of individual entrepreneurs and failures of others, legal and real estate transactions resulting from transformed or failed manufactures, promotional appeals to legislatures, and tracts about technological and livestock improvement yield fruitful connections to the manuscript materials.

Researchers investigating textiles will want to peruse the many dozens of illustrated catalogues of antebellum manufacturers and retailers, as well as the early nineteenth-century engravings held at Hagley.  Speeches and legislative enactments regarding cotton, hemp, sugar, and numerous other commodities related to early manufacturing, scores of which are housed at Hagley, also link the manscript records to a wider context.

B.                 Flour Mills

            Of the many kinds of mills that farmers and entrepreneurs established in the region, grist mills dominate in the records, as they did the late-colonial and early national landscape.  

            The Thomas Lea family developed one of the greatest flour milling concerns in the Brandywine River network of millers from the 1770s to the mid-1800s.  Lea formed a partnership with Joseph Tatnall, who was already milling in Delaware in the 1760s,  to mill on the northern bank of the river; Lea left the mills to his son, William, when he died in 1837.  Lea married Tatnall's oldest daughter, Sarah in 1785.  The partnership of Tatnall & Lea ran from the 1770s to 1864 (Thomas died in 1824, and his son William took over his share of the partnership), when it took in Henry and Preston Lea and became William Lea and Sons.  In various forms, the company operated until 1927 when it was dissolved.  The primary records for the Lea milling concerns are at HSD.  Hagley holds three bodies of material of linked importance.  One of these are the William Lea & Sons Company Records, 1822-1890 (118 items), which include primarily correspondence and orders for goods and services, as well as documentation concerning the mills during the Civil War era.  The second group of materials  is the Lea Mills Collection, 1679-1938, within the William Corbit Spruance Papers (13.4 linear ft.).  Spruance married Alice Moore Lea, and spent years collecting family records, including ledgers, cash books, order books, records of shipments, and many other items related to milling.  Of signal importance are a Day Book  of the Tatnall & Lea partnership, 1815-1819; and an Account Book of Tatnall and Lea, 1786-1789; both of which are of vital interest to scholars of four milling and export trade.  This collection also includes numerous documents of William Lea in the generation after the Civil War, and a map of Brandywine Village, drawn from a 1790 original (now lost).

            The third body of Lea materials at Hagley consisted of the Thomas Lea & Son Account Books, 1773-1822, a microfilm and photocopy collection from the Longwood Library collections (2 vols.)   These consist of a Ledger (1773-1778), which details richly the incoming grain and outgoing flour of many varieties and prices, as well as accounts for purchased commodities and services for the Lea household and mill workers.  Also is a Receipt Book (1817-1822), covering payments for grain, freighting, hauling, acquiring wood, deliveries of sundries, rents on surrounding farmlands, interest on bonds, wages for laborers, and other activities.  In all, the Thomas Lea materials offer a deep, if sometimes episodic, view of a prosperous milling operation.

            The Joseph Shipley Papers, 1741-1898 (1.2 linear ft.) contain a wealth of information about the flour milling businesses of the Brandywine and the connections of millers to American and British merchants in the early republic.  Son of Thomas Shipley, the great Brandywine miller of the late 1700s, began as a clerk in the Samuel Canby, Jr. counting house in Philadelphia in 1813, and then as a Liverpool agent for Philadelphia merchant John Welsh in 1819.  From England, Thomas Shipley organized shipping and finance for trans-Atlantic trade in cotton and manufactured goods.  The bulk of Hagley's holdings in this collection are letters from family and associates about the milling business on the Brandywine and in New York.  His father Joseph (1752-1832) and his brother Samuel (1777-1848) provided constant information about flows of grain and flour, prices at various American ports, conditions of shipping, insurance costs, and more in the early republic.  Letters from the Newlin and Canby families in Delaware and Philadelphia are also included.  In addition, the collection includes letters from flour merchants Richard Price and Thomas Newlin of Philadelphia, an account book (1819-1820) covering a flour and grain business trip to Maryland and Virginia, a diary of Shipley's travels to England, a ledger for Shipley, Welsh & Co. (1825-1826), loose accounts papers with cotton and flour factor John Welsh of Philadelphia (1819-1826), and numerous account books for banking affairs covering various periods from 1815 to 1862 (see "Banking").  These account books include references to business with dozens of the new nation's prominent cotton and flour dealers, as well as some of the most notable public improvements advocates.

            By 1826, Thomas Shipley was in partnership with the famous Alexander Brown & Sons, the Baltimore bankers and merchants with branch offices in New York, Philadelphia, London, and Liverpool.  In 1837, Shipley helped save the business from bankruptcy during the deepening months of the financial panic by negotiating credit with the Bank of England (see "Panic of 1837" and "Commerce").  He took on banking business under the name Brown Brothers & Company and Brown, Shipley & Company until 1850.

            The Tatnalls, another of the great milling families in the area, have few direct resources housed at Hagley, but their commercial connections and milling activities may be traced through the Lea Mills Collection, the Betts & Seal company records, the Thomas Lea & Son and William Lea & Son records, the Samuel Canby Diaries (see below), and the Morse-Lea photograph collection.  [see #638 and #639]

            The Samuel Canby Diaries, 1779-1831 (3 vols., microform of Yale University Library originals), are an invaluable source for conditions at the mills during this era, as well as neighborhood production and shipping issues.  Like the Leas, Tatnalls, and Shipleys, Pooles, Maris's, and Strouds, Canby was in partnership with the great millers on the northern bank of the Brandywine River.  The first volume, covering 1779 to 1796, gives many accounts for farm-related activities that supported the mills, including hay, hauling, pasturing, timber, grazing land rental, and the like; also included are cash accounts of sums paid to farmers and cartmen for deliveries of grain and sums collected for sales of flour during the Revolutionary years.  Relations with Canby's partners can be traced to a certain extent in this volume as well.  

            The Samuel Hartshorne, Account Book, 1772-1781 (1 vol.) provides valuable parallel information about prosperous milling in Milford Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  And the Peter Root Ledger, 1815-1825 (1 vol.) shows in detail the gristing and saw milling in Lancaster, Pennsylvania during the era.   The Thomas Gilpin Miscellany, 1769-1772 (32 pp.) gives insights about milling at Millington, Maryland before the Revolution.  

            Of special interest to scholars is a small section of the Longwood Manuscripts held at Hagley related to failed attempts to found additional grist mills after the War of 1812.  The Brandywine Mill Seat Company Records, 1798-1854 (33 items), documents efforts by a number of successful area businessmen to attract manufacturing enterprises to the fast waters of the river system, and their utter failure to sell surveyed mill seats and eventual dissolution of the company in 1829.  

            Later records include the John Houpt Business Papers, 1845-1879, a miller in Springfield Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  Included in the collection's 36 items are two account books for the mill, with entries for both flour and cut lumber, as well as tolls collected from area farmers, running to 1874.     For Hollisterville, Salem Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania, there are two account books for Alpheus Hollister's general store, covering 1848-1867, next to his saw and grist mills, recording typical transactions of a rural storekeeper (.33 linear ft.)

            Hagley holds only a few references to the renowned Ellicott brothers' mills outside of Baltimore in the early republic, most of which will be found in the records of merchants [See "Commerce" above]

            There are a number of legal, promotional, and mechanical tracts about the grist milling operations and improvements of Oliver Evans (1755-1819), many of which link Evans to merchants and manufactures in the region.  See also the "Alba B. Johnson Collection of Oliver Evans Manuscripts" for miscellaneous details of Evans' improvements.

            A "Memorial of the Citizens of Lancaster City and County," dated 1839 (19 p.), lists furnaces, forges, rolling-mills, and grist mills in the county.

            "American Miller and Millwrights' Assistant" by William Carter Hughes (1850) gives valuable insight into the advice offered entrepreneurs of the era.  Numerous late-nineteenth century publications about milling, millwrighting, mill repair, bolting, and related mill activities.  

            "Return to Two Orders of the Honourable House of Commons" (1825) (33 p., illus.) lists grain and flour imported officially into England from all foreign places over the period 1800 to 1825, in quarterly compilations by the inspector general.  

            Scholars will find numerous references to grist milling in the records of iron forges and iron plantations, as well as secondary publications about milling in both the manuscripts reading area and the library shelves at Hagley.  Hagley also holds numerous photographs of area mills, some showing views of eighteenth-century works.  See the Morse-Lea Photograph Collection, for example.

            See Jeremiah Brown, below

            C.        Brewing, Smithing, Papermaking, Tanning, and Other Manufactures

            Although most beer brewing continued to take place in homes during the colonial era, it also became a profitable enterprise for entrepreneurial investors where demand from seafaring and urban populations was high, and regular imports of raw materials for brewing could be acquired.  Among Philadelphia's prominent brewers was the Anthony Morris (1654-1721) family and his descendants. Of Quaker background, and migrating through New Jersey from Barbados, Morris started up the second brewery in Philadelphia by 1687; his son, Anthony Morris, Jr. (1682-1763) continued to expand the brewing business and invested in iron furnaces  (see Potts and Rutter family records) and flour milling as well.  Fifth generation descendants, Luke Wistar Morris (1768-1830) and Isaac Wistar Morris (1770-1831) continued the brewery, now located on Dock and Pearl Streets.  Series II, Papers of Isaac Wistar Morris, contain valuable items on the brewery, including two letter books covering 1811 to 1830.  See "Iron Mills and Forges" and "Commerce."  See also related materials at HSP.

            The Henry Family Papers, 1758-1909 (12 linear ft.) show the manufacturing successes and failures of five generations of a gunsmithing family business in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania from the pre-Revolutionary years to the late nineteenth century.  Although often fragmentary, the records give important indications of how smithing, gun sales, recruitment and training of labor, and related activities of the trade changed over time.  William Henry (1729-1786) apprenticed to a Lancaster gunsmith in 1744, and by 1750 was in partnership with Joseph Simon, a local merchant and Indian trader.  Together, they supplied guns to the colonial troops in the Seven Years' War, and thereafter William Henry perfected the "Henry Rifle," a prototype of the Kentucky rifle and in great demand for its precision.  Inventor, Continental Congress delegate, member of the APS in Philadelphia, Henry passed on his smithing skills and shops to three sons who continued the business in Lancaster and expanded to Nazareth, Pennsylvania.  William Henry, Jr. (1757-1821) contracted to supply the federal government with 10,000 muskets and bayonets in 1808, delivered at a rate of 2,000 per year; with his son, William III (1794-1878), he expanded during anticipated war demand of 1812-1813, building the Boulton Gun Works at Jacobsburg, Pennsylvania.  Unacceptably low quality of the firearms, however, put the Henry's out of their government contract and into debt; the Panic of 1819 further hurt the family business.  Recovery was slow thereafter, and only by integrating smithing works with nearby forges and mining operations, and eventually railroad contracting,  did the next two generations continue to struggle financially.  The records detail many additional twists and turn of family financial and manufacturing affairs.  Most of the records concern the Boulton Gun Works and a store in Philadelphia, including an Account Book for 1808-1881, that details prices, sales, receipts, shop rules for workers, farm accounts, timber deliveries, and the company store operations.  Wage Books (1832-1839), Boarders' Accounts (1817-1842), and Workmen's Ledgers (1833-1881) are of special interest to social and labor historians; papers related to the Revolutionary War show the operations of the workshops and supply arrangements before disputes arose with the government; numerous other papers supplement the long careers of the Henry's in this business.

            For gunpowder, see entries under the du Pont family holdings.

            Hagley contains only a few traces of the important enterprise of shipbuilding before the Civil War.  Of these, the George Bowen & Company Records, 1829-1898 (1.75 linear ft.) contain 16 volumes of account books with fragementary evidence of mechanics' tasks, supplies of wood and coal, customers, operating expenses, and acquisition of shipbuilding supplies such as tar, white lead, duck, turpentine, and the like for his business in Newport, Rhode Island.  Bowen also bought and sold coal that was shipped from New York and Philadelphia, and traded in cotton.

            The Delaware River valley's concentrated system of fast waterways linked to the Atlantic trading system gave rise to some of the nation's most important paper-making enterprises.  The Curtis Paper Company Records, 1823-1946 (5.5 linear ft.) succeeded the Milford Paper Mill on White Clay Creek, Newark, Delaware (founded by Thomas Meeteer in 1789) after 1848.  Curtis & Brother Company produced a high-quality paper until after the Civil War, when the firm switched to making envelope stock, card, and colored paper.  Among the manufacturing records covering the period of this survey that are in this large collection see the Journals (1858-1866); Ledgers (1848-1934); Cash Books (1823-1932); and Statements (1861-1866).

            The Joshua Gilpin Journals and Notebooks, 1790-1833 (3 reels  microf.) detail his travels in England during the 1790s and extensive observations of the Industrial Revolution, including paper making, which Gilpin started with his brother Thomas in 1817.  [see also HSP, Gilpin Family Papers]   The Joshua Gilpin Notes, (ca. 1817-1830, 7 items) explain the pulp bleaching and manufacture of paper; the Joshua Gilpin Letters, 1798-1803 (4 items) relate matters of machine procurement while he was abroad.  There are extensive descriptions of manufactures in England, including textiles, pottery, forging, and accounts of Gilpin's encounters with prominent inventors and entrepreneurs throughout England.

            The Benjamin Eshelman Account Book, 1835-1838 (1 vol.) documents the operation of a family-owned hand-made paper enterprise that produced "Extra Royal" paper, ruled cap, deed paper, wrapping paper, bags, and other commodities from rags and wood.  Supplies purchased included vitriol, nails, alum, food for a company store run by Eshelman, workers' names and wages, rents charged, purchases of goods from distant merchants, and other daily activities.  Eshelman's narrowly profitable business was located in Bart Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

            In addition, the Rockland Manufacturing Company Records [above] document the paper milling there beginning in the 1850s.  See also the records of the Gilpin and Savery families [elsewhere].

            Tanning was an important enterprise developed in the neighborhood of grist, saw, and paper mills in the Brandywine Valley.  Hagley holds the Jonathan Meredith Papers, 1775-1804 (50 items), which cover a business in Philadelphia during one generation, including purchases of hides and bark, marketing of finished leather, orders from customers, and an inventory of tanyards in the city in 1796, as well as a few pieces of correspondence with other leather manufacturers.  See also the Jonathan Meredith Family Papers, HSP.  

            Of related interest is the Theophilus Miles Smith Ledger, 1777-1818, a length (450pp.) volume of entries for this shoemaker and leather dealer near Milford, Connecticut, including many Connecticut Revolutionary War orders.  Smith sold shoes and hides, and expanded to slaughtering, packaging pork, and transporting hay.  

            Of greatest value to researchers in the early national period are the A. Cardon & Company Records, 1815-1833 (2.5 linear ft.).  Organized by relatives of the du Ponts from France, and financed with du Pont money, the company lasted just ten years, producing leather for local manufacture.  The records include many official documents about incorporation and dissolution, as well as family and associate correspondence, account books covering wages, freight charges, rents, receipts for hides and skins, and related supply purchases.  

            The William Jones Accounts Ledger, 1836-1843 (1 vol.) shows the purchases of skins and sales of harness and bridle leather out of this small business in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  The Joseph Howell Ledger, 1822-1825 (1 vol.) documents the work of a Falsington, Pennsylvania tanner.  The Almon Fuller Daybooks, 1835-1840 (2 vols.) describe a small shoemaking shop in northeastern Pennsylvania (Wyalusing), with information about customers and workers, enumeration of how tasks were performed, and price schedules.  There is also valuable information about hiring apprentices, and their room and board arrangements.

            A later Daybook (1861-1883) in the Adam Innes collection shows the operations of a tannery in the Civil and post-War Bradford County, Pennsylvania region.  The Daybook details transactions with customers, suppliers, deliveries of cow and swine hides, marketing of sole leather, and many household purchases of necessities.

            In the Caspar Wistar Estate Book, 1752-1765 (1 vol.) scholars will find receipts and a list of bonds belonging to this family.  Wistar, a German immigrant to Philadelphia, was first a merchant and then a prosperous brass button manufacturer.  In 1739 he founded the first glassworks in America near Salem, New Jersey.

            The Andrew Campbell Papers, 1840-1926 (1.8 linear ft.) offer details about the invention of the press-feeding machine in 1853.  Campbell (1821-1890) was an important inventor of printing press parts (he held at least 50 patents) and a manufacturer of printing presses in Brooklyn, New York.  The papers include copies of patents and company records; Campbell's 1886 history of the printing press; essays on improvements in printing; notes on inventions and performance of his presses; drawings; and numerous inventories, lists of parts, samples of Campbell printing, copies of advertisements, and miscellaneous personal papers.

            In the Singer Company Records, 1851-1990 (8 linear ft.) there are a few fragmentary materials dating before the Civil War that outline the earliest manufacture and marketing of the highly significant invention, the sewing machine.  

            An anonymous Potter's Account Book, 1821-1827 (1 vol.) shows the business of possibly Jacob Jenkins, Morgantown, Berks County, Pennsylvania.   The Matthew Crips Ledger, 1761-1789 (1 reel microf.), details the manufacture and sales of cups and saucers, acquisition of raw materials, customers, and nature of work from his shop in Wilmington, Delaware, which led to his outstanding success.  The C. Schrack & Company Records, 1808-1923 (136 linear ft., 5 reels of microf.) contain sales and purchase records, account books, and store inventories for this carriage painter and merchant in Philadelphia.  Schrack also sold drugs from 1820 to 1830, and supplied varnish to carriage builders and shipbuilders.  In the 1850s, Schrack also supplied artists and house painters with supplies and colored glass.  See also HSP and Winterthur records about this company.

            The Sellers Family Business Records, 1774-1834 (1 reel microf.) detail the rise of a family business in Philadelphia and Upper Darby that manufactured wool cards, wire, and paper moulds.  Member of the "Fighting Quakers" group during the Revolution, Nathan Sellers began developing his wire weaving business and his manufacture of paper moulds during the war.  With aid from Congress, the business grew; by the mid-1780s Nathan and his younger brother, David, had become leaders in a wide circle of Philadelphia entrepreneurs, inventors, mechanics, and promoters.  The business continued to grow under the leadership of both brothers' sons, and by the 1830s the new company, "Cardington" in Upper Darby was manufacturing locomotives.

            The Harvey Family Papers, 1796-1913 (3 linear ft.) document another engineering family's rise in metalworking and metallurgy, in western New York and Poughkeepsie, New York.  Thomas William Harvey aprenticed as a blacksmith and soon after the War of 1812 was experimenting in the production of screws, nails, and spikes; by the 1830s he was manufacturing printing press parts.  The Panic of 1837 put his Poughkeepsie Screw Manufacturing Company (organized in 1836) through hard times, and Harvey turned to experiments with electricity and electro-magnetism, as well two other ill-fated small screw manufacturing companies.  In 1852 he helped found the famous Tilly Foster iron mines in Putnam County, New York, as well as the company's furnaces in what is now the Bronx.  His son carried on with company work and inventing after the Civil War.  Most of this collection includes essays on iron, forges, and various inventions; copies of patents and drawing of Harvey's work; and two account books for the Harvey Electro Megnetic Company (1839-1840), along with notes on magnetic experiments.

            Census of Manufactures, New Castle County, 1820 (#580)

      Supplementing the large collection of Caspar Wistar Papers at the HSP, Hagley holds the Caspar Wistar Estate Book, 1752-1765 (1 vol.), which has some related materials about his brass button manufacturing business and a list of bonds held by his widow, Catherine Jansen Wistar.

            Researchers will find hundreds of related pamphlets, trade catalogues, company histories, marketing and advertising materials, and printed reflections on the nature and consequences of early manufactures for the mid-Atlantic region.

III.               AGRICULTURE AND RURAL STOREKEEPING; HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTING

A rich repository of information about planting, harvesting, weather conditions, livestock raising,

and marketing of farm produce may be found in the Forwood Family Account Books, 1790-1889 (7 vols.).  The family owned land north of Wilmington beginning in 1790, and grew large crops of wheat, oats, and corn for years, and then added livestock brokering to their concerns.  By the 1820s, the family sold timber regularly to area manufacturers and smiths.

Yeates Family Papers, 1740s ff (#823) [ see my notes]

Bolton Farm Records

Wallace Store, 1775-179?.  The Wallaces of Blue Ball, Pennsylvania

            Jeremiah Brown, of early Quaker descent in the Delaware Valley, purchased his father's grist mills just before the American Revolution and then acquired additional mills and land near Little Britain Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Brown's carters took flour to Christiana Bridge, Delaware for shipment into Philadelphia.  He owned hundreds of acres of land in the surrounding area, and at least one general store near the mills.  Brown was part-owner.  Although no milling records seem to have survived, Hagley holds three account books, covering 1796 to 1807, of the "Little Britain General Store," which detail activities of an intricate community of farmers, retailers, importers, and servants.  Brown loaned cash, traded goods for labor, brought in West Indies and European imports, and accepted produce as payment for manufactured commodities.  The Ledgers show relatively heavy activity with Philadelphia flour, sugar, and textiles merchants.  The accounts detail a growing business with the town's free African-American community.  Together, they are a rich source for understanding the daily lives of richly varied town and its rural hinterlands.

            An unrelated Brown, of Brown & Hewett Ledger, 1796-1804 (1 vol.) from Rome, New York deals with the accounts of a frontier storekeeper who imported brandy, rum, tobacco, paper, textiles, and marketed farm surpluses of wheat and lumber, and especially potash.  Cash, credit, and barter are entered in this one volume.

            A glimpse of another New York storekeeper is in Thompson & Company Daybook, 1812-1815, (1 vol.) for Riga Corners, Monroe County.  The daybook, covering the earliest years of the neighborhood around Rochester, New York, shows typical imports of sugar, whiskey, rum, textiles, tobacco, nails, hardware, knives, paper, smithery, leather goods, and household items.  

            The Samuel Gregg Account Book, 1774-1845 is actually two rural businesses combined in one volume.  Interspersed in the pages of the Gregg Account Book is the ledger of Stephen Sutton, a small storekeeper in western New Castle County near Cecil County, Maryland, which runs from 1774 to 1776.  Sutton used overland wagon travel to trade imported and agricultural goods into Pennsylvania.   Sutton's daughter married Samuel Gregg, a farmer of Christiana Hundred, New Castle County, who carried on the account book, covering 1826 to 1845.   Samuel and Sarah Sutton Gregg recorded (although irregularly) the names of their farm boarders, amounts and prices of butter and eggs intended to be sold away from the farm, and household purchases of food and sundries.  

            In the Ford Family Business Papers, 1803-1868 (5 volumes, .5 linear ft.), there is a valuable household day book kept by William Ford originally of Christiana Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware, and later of the Pottsville, Pennsylvania area, covering the years 1833-1856, as well as a household ledger of his brother Isaac Ford kept for the longer period 1820-1868, together disclosing valuable information about the running of rural households in the era.   Additional glimpses of household accounting are available in the Shipley, Gregg, Haldeman, and Henry family papers held at Hagley.

            In the Musselman Family Business Papers, 1812-1893 (3.4 linear ft.) are extensive sources for study of a prominent Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farming, saw milling, and distilling family.  Michael Musselman (1782-1851) built the original enterprises and had five sons; there are 24 Account Books in this very large collection, recording the work on the farm; milling at Wheatland Mills by his third son, John; flour and corn consignments to Musselman, Hertzler & Company in Philadelphia; a memorandum book of John (1852-1872) recording bushels of grain and barrels of flour produced, as well as workers and their wages on the farm.  There are also family accounts.  John Musselman (1811-ca. 1881) lived on his father's farm until 1830, then became a miller's apprentice at Strasburg Township, and eventually owned Wheatland Mills, a large merchant mill, until about 1881.   

            The Joseph Hanson Account Book, 1844-1858 (1 vol.) is a combined ledger and memorandum book that documents the employment of numerous men and boys over these years as farm laborers; interspersed in the records are notations about hiring women and African-Americans, and the nature of each individual's work.  Scholars will find much useful information about the time it took to perform certain farm chores such as butchering, drilling wheat, cutting timber, drawing water, and other activities.  

            The Cannon Family Papers, 1804-1856 (10 reels microf.) cover generations of family storekeeping and small-scale manufacturing in Sussex County, Delaware.  As dealers in grain and timber products, and owners of grist and saw mills, as well as a brickyard, the first two generations of Cannons (their active business years covering roughly 1820 to 1860) became prominent in southern state business.  Just prior to the Civil War the Cannons planted peach orchards of over 5,000 trees, which became the basis for the fruit canning industry in the mid-Atlantic subsequently.  General store ledgers cover 1845-1856.

            [Finish]:  Two Odessa-area, Delaware storekeepers' accounts cover both a formative period and offer a detailed picture of mid-state rural economics.  The Corbit Family Papers (#371) and the Starr Family Papers, 1795-1845 (6 vol.).   Accounts for farmer George Pierson of Mill Creek Hundred, in New Castle County, cover a later period, 1856-1870 and are less detailed overall.

            The William Hitchcock, Account Book, 1800-1825 (1 vol.) is a rare glimpse into the personal records of a rural wage worker.  Hitchcock worked at carding and fulling, showmaking, carpentry, bee-keeping, as a waggoner and farm worker around New Haven, Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts.  

            Two anonymous rural account collections offer additional details about farming in the region.  One, the Farm Accounts of a family in either Chester or New Castle County, cover the years 1833-1845 in one volume.  The other, the Accounts of a General Store, in Quarryville, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, cover a longer period from 1836 to 1859 in one volume in German.

See also Jeremiah Brown, under "Mills."  Many Brandywine Valley small manufacturers also doubled as farmers, some as gentlemen farmers; in their records are numerous references to agricultural work, laborers, and wages paid.  See especially the Forwood Family Papers, the Phillips Family Papers, and the Hanson Family Papers.  These collections also contain information about livestock purchases and sales, as well as livestock raising, in the northern Delaware area.

Hagley holds scores of treatises and pamphlets on subjects related to agricultural improvement and government promotion of it.   For example, the records of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture include documents and legislation of various kinds and dates.   A small pamphlet published in 1800, written by George Logan, on agricultural improvement, contains the constitution of the Lancaster County Society for Promoting of Agriculture, Manufactures, and the Useful Arts.  Numerous government and improvement society works, imported primarily for private libraries, especially the Du Ponts, are in French.

Scholars with interests in household production will find useful the volume by Elizabeth E. Lea (1793-1858), A Quaker Woman's Cookbook: The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, ed. William W. Weaver (orig. publ., Baltimore, 1853; repr. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982) (310 p.)

C.                 Forges, Furnaces, and Iron Manufactures

Pine Forge, built around 1725 in Berks County, was one of Pennsylvania's earliest iron works.  The site passed from the first owner Thomas Rutter (1680-1752) to John Potts, Sr. (1710-1768) and David Potts (1741-1798), then to David Rutter (1766-1817).  Hagley holds two volumes of Pine Forge Account Books, 1769-1780, covering 1769-1777, and a miscellaneous income and expense volume for 1770-1780 that show a distillery, nailery, smith's shop, and other buildings operating on the site.  [See Potts-Rutter Papers at Hagley as well; and see Pine Forge accounts at HSP.  See also entries for John Potts below]

Casper Wistar, Estate Book, 1752-1765, (1 volume) contains a cash book of receipts for Wistar (1696-1752), a German immigrant who became a successful Philadelphia merchant and brass-button maker, as well as transactions with his son and heir Richard Wistar.  The volume also contains a list of bonds belonging to his wife, Catherine Jansen Wistar.  Additional family papers are located at HSP.  

In the very large collection of Morris Family Papers, 1686-1935 (10.5 linear ft.) (see "Commerce" and "Other Manufactures"), Anthony Morris, Jr.'s (1681-1763) records show that the family added to their brewing enterprise heavy investment in the iron industry after 1720, with the Rutter and Potts operations at Colebrookdale Furnace in Berks County; in 1727 Morris helped found the Durham Furnace, which subseqent generations of Morris's continued to operate.  Most mining and iron forge materials are in Series I of this collection, the Samuel Morris Papers; Samuel was the grandson of Anthony Morris, Jr.  

The Pine Grove Furnace, Bills of Lading, 1767-1768, for the works at Broad Creek, DE, show shipments of pig iron, stoves, andirons, and other small iron implements to the Philadelphia area.  Although this collection is small, it is an important link to the careers of Abraham Mitchel & Company, Thomas and William Lightfoot and Company (of Philadelphia), Samuel and Walter Franklin of New York.  The firm ended with Walter Franklin, caught behind British lines during the Revolution, died in 1778.

            George Ross and Co. contructed the Spring Forge at the headwaters of Cordorus Creek, Pigeon Hills, PA (in York County) in 1770.  The forge changed hands frequently during the next 45 years, and then remained in Thomas B. Coleman's hands until 1851.  Hagley holds one ledger for 1772-1773, which documents production of pig iron, castings, accounts with local millers, and sales to important area iron masters (including Henry William Steigel, George Ege, and others; see entries below) [See Coleman entries below]

Among the earliest papers covering the post-Revolutionary era, those of the Oley Forge founded in 1780 twelve miles east of Reading, PA, give a brief, but detailed picture for operations in 1796.  A ledger, cash book, and journal provide complementary records.   The Coventry Forge, Account Book, 1787-1789, shows the purchases and sales for Pennsylvania's second iron works, and records of slave labor.  Established in 1717 by Samuel Nutt, Sr., the works passed to Thomas Potts, Jr. and his son during the 1750 to 1790s. [See also Potts-Rutter Families Papers at Hagley; Coventry Forge papers at HSP nd Chester County Historical Society.]  

The Schuylkill Forge at Port Clinton, PA, built in 1796, was owned by George Ege until its demise in the 1850s.  At Hagley there is one volume of cash accounts covering 1797-1801.  This volume should be used in conjunction with other forge and retail records for the area.

            The John Potts, Jr. Business Papers, 1767-1830 (.5 linear ft.) contain nearly 300 items that complement the Pine Forge holdings and illustrate the owner's involvement in other economic activities such land speculation, mining, and expansion into other furnace and forge operations.  Potts (1760-1809) was the son of Samuel Potts, an iron master at Pottstown, PA, and nephew of John Potts, Sr., a Loyalist.  In 1793 John, Jr., and his brothers formed the Copper Mine Company of Pennsylvania. [records at Hagley for this?]  In the early 1800s, Potts lived in Alexandria, VA; he took over the operation of the Keeptryst Furnace near there, and speculated extensively in land in Randolph and Spotsylvania Counties.  Potts, however, did not prosper in these later ventures and died insolvent in 1809.  Hagley's holdings consist mainly of correspondence between Potts and associates in business, including employment of miners and supply movements.

            Between Reading and Allentown, Jacob Lesher built the District Forge in 1795.  At the headwaters of the Schuylkill River, Lewis Reese and Isaac Thomas built the Greenwood Furnace in 1796.  Starting in 1799 John Potts (1757-1827)began to acquire surrounding land, and soon bought both furnaces.  By 1807 the Greenwood Forge had become the Greenwood Iron Works, and during 1816-1817, Potts laid out the town of Pottsville, which soon became a center of anthracite coal extraction and export.  Hagley holds six volumes of the John Potts Business Records, 1799-1828, including the Greenwood Iron Works Time Books for 1807-1812, 1817-19, and 1827-1828; a Day Book for 1807-1808; and the District Forge Day Book for 1799-1801.  Together, these volumes give a rare thorough view of daily activities, management decisions, relations with local flour and timber suppliers, wages (in the day books), boarding fees, and purchases for personnel at two locations.

            Hagley also holds three reels of microfilm Potts-Rutter Families, Papers, 1714-1839, which come from the Bethlehem Steel  Corporation Records in Bethlehem, PA.  Thomas Rutter came as a blacksmithg from England to Germantown in 1714, and established a forge in Berks County in 1716; in about 1720 he also set up the Colebrook Furnace, and in 1725, Pine Forge.  Thomas Potts, Sr. became his ironmaster, who also ssumed management of the forge before Rutter's death in 1730.  All three of Potts's sons married three of Rutter's granddaughters, thereby cemeting the iron interest; each of the women had inherited shares of other iron mines and forges as well, all of them along French Creek south of the Schuylkill River.  By the 1750s, John Potts also had acquired Mount Joy or Valley Forge (built 1742), and built Pottsgrove Forge in 1752, site of Pottstown after 1761.  Upon his death in 1768, the next generation of Potts sons and sons-in-law carried on with the Colebrookdale forges, Warwick forge, Joanna Furnace, Glasgow Forge, and Reading Furnace (which supplied cannon for the Continental Army during the Revolution), Coventry Forge, Nutt steel furnace, Pine Forge, and other properties down to 1843.  In this collection are the Pine Forge Records during the Revolutionary War, including time books, worker production accounts, farming activities related to feeding forge workers, and slave purchases; additional items for subsequent years show aspects of the relationships among the forges.  [See also related material at the HSP]

            In the Morris Family Papers, 1684-1935 [see fuller entry under Commerce] are records of Anthony Morris's (b. 1681) investments in the Colbrookdale Furnace in Berks County and the Durham Furnace, as well as loans to the Batsto Iron Works during the Revolutionary era.

            Isaac Potts' (1750-1803) Martha Furnace Day Book and Diary, 1808-1815 relates the daily activities of an important Burlington County, New Jersey iron plantation during the first post-Revolutionary generation.  The day book portion contains time sheets, lists of workers, amounts of raw materials purchased, and output; the dairy is an excellent source of social history at an early iron plantation, and contains information on a total of 360 individuals working at the furnace or supplying it from the countryside.  The diary describes work rhythms, celebrations, drunkeness, accidents, and relations with local farmers in the Pine Barrens.  There are many references to nearby ironworks at Batsto, Federal Furnace, Hampton, Hanover, and Weymouth.  

Scattered throughout Hagley’s collections there is correspondence written by merchant and manufacturer Archibald McCall (1767-1843) who operated the Glasgow Forge near Pottstown.  These letters show limited indications of his business relationships with several of Delaware and Pennsylvania’s leading merchants.  See E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Correspondence, 1805-1901, Eleuthera Bradford du Pont Collection, 1799-1834, Joseph Donath & Co., Letterbooks, 1801-1806 (2 volumes), Victor du Pont, Papers, 1753-1847 (3 linear feet), and Eleuthère Irénée, Papers, 1782-1838.

In the Wright Family Papers, 1785-1902 (16.67 linear feet), scholars will find valuable connections between the Philadelphia commercial community and the iron masters of surrounding counties.  Samuel Gardiner Wright, a merchant and real estate investor who migrated to Philadelphia from Burlington, New Jersey in 1781, rose rapidly in the recovering urban setting (see Wright Family Papers under commerce).  Within this large collection, Wright's entry and then success in iron production emerges in detail.  In 1820 he began to deal in iron products and ore; that year, he leased the Millville Furnace, and then the Delaware Furnace in Millsboro, DE.  Between 1823 and 1826, Wright purchased about 26,000 acres of timber tract in New Jersey, including the defunct Federal Furnace and Phoenix Furnace; he reopened the former as Dover Furnace in 1825.  Wright's extraction of bog iron in Delaware and New Jersey was extensive, and at a Greenwood Forest Tract he produced charcoal.  Within a few years, Wright helped found the Mount Hope Mining Company in Morris County, NJ, where his operations manufactured stoves, pipe, wagon wheel boxes, and other small goods; he also provided decorative iron goods and iron doors for prisons to the architect John Haviland.  See also Wright's connections to coastal shipping and land deals.  Most of this collection consists of inbound correspondence.

In 1831 William Henry (1794-1878), John Jordan, Jr., and John F. Woole formed a partnership that created the Oxford Furnace in Warren County, NJ.  For eight years they operated the iron mines and furnace there, then, after the Panic of 1837 set in, they sold the Oxford operations to George W. and Selden T. Scranton, who keep the furnace going until 1844.  Hagley holds one reel of microfilm reproducing a company blotter and charter of the company.  [See also Henry Family Papers and Scranton Family Papers, below.]

            Smaller collections of items related to the iron industry include Hagley's Iron Industry Miscellany (25 items), letters concerning shipments of supplies to the Etna Words near Pittsburgh (1844), deliveries of holloware (1790), letters concerning business at the Montour Iron Company (1855-1858), and bills for various orders of stoves and iron products during the 1820s and 1830s.   The Chambers Brothers & Company Ledger, 1860-1864 illustrates a Philadelphia foundry and machine shop's interests during the Civil War.  

            The Cooper & Hewitt Records, 1848-1870 relate to the operation of two partners, Abram S. Hewitt and Peter Cooper, of the rolling mill complex at Trenton, New Jersey that was started in 1845. Two years later it was incorporated as the Trenton Iron Company, and along with the blast furnaces at Philipsburg and mines at Ringwood, became additions to the two men's rising fortunes.  Hewitt further purchased the iron mines at Andover, New Jersey in 1847, and the Durham Iron Works in Pennsylvania in 1870.  In 1854, Cooper & Hewitt built the Sussex Mine Railroad that connected mines to canal line, carrying ore to furnaces at Philipsburg until about 1862.  Hagley's collection is comprised of 82 letters and two payroll sheets.

            The Cumberland Forge Records are housed in the Haldeman Family Papers, 1801-1885, where there are a number of important records.  The forge was owned by Jacob M. Haldeman (1781-1857) from 1806.  He added a rolling and slitting mill at New Cumberland, a major river port receiving Cumberland Valley grain, flour, whiskey, and iron ore.  Haldeman also built a large grist mill, and stayed in business until 1826; in 1830 he moved to Harrisburg, where he subsequently purchased large shares in two furnaces near Carlisle, and helped found the Chestnut Hill Iron Company in 1851.  In the family papers group are production books for the forge and rolling mill, records of workers' output (1810-1835), provisioning books keep at the company store, customer orders, bank books and bills paid, grist mill accounts, and other items.  Haldeman's customers lived throughout Pennsylvania and at Baltimore and Philadelphia.  There are also tenant papers, eviction notices, property valuations (1806-1866), estate papers for the Colebrooks Furnace in Lebanon County (1816-1819), and diaries of travel in Europe during the late 1820s.

            The Millville, New Jersey area Cumberland Furnace was constructed by David C. Wood in 1803, and enlarged in 1814.  The plant specialized in production of stoves, then cast iron pipe.  David C. Wood encountered financial difficulties in 1849 and sold his furnace to Richard D. Wood, a renowned Philadelphia wholesale merchant.  Richard again enlarged the Cumberland Furnace by adding a cotton mill in 1854, and then incorporating the Millville Manufacturing Company, forerunner of today's Wawa, Inc., in 1865 (see "Cotton Mills").  Series I of this collection involves David C. Wood's papers concerning the furnace and manufacturing, including Letterbooks (1822-1858) and Correspondence (1803-1855), which link Wood to numerous New York and New Jersey merchants

            Equally fruitful are the extensive Grubb Family Business Records, 1818-1854 (12 linear feet).  Peter Grubb (1692-1754) erected the Cornwall Furnace and Hopewell Furnaces between 1730 and 1734.  His two sons, Curtis and Peter inherited the properties; the former sold his shares to Robert Coleman (see below), from which the Coleman family fortunes came in subsequent years.  The other son, Peter, lived at Hopewell Forge and built a large furnace at Mount Hope in 1785; his son Henry inherited the property at the age of 12, at first formed a partnership with Coleman, and splitting the properties in 1802:  Coleman took Hopewell and Henry Grubb took Mount Hope.  Henry also purchased the Codorus Iron Works in York County in about 1802.  Three of his sons inherited the iron business as very young men, and built their fortunes with additional investment.  Edward Burd Grubb (1810-1867) and Clement Brooke Grubb (1815-1889) operated Mount Hope, Mount Vernon, Codorus, and part of Cornwall Mines; they added a new Mananda Furnace in Dauphin County in 1837.  Clement sold his interests to the third son, Alfred Bates Grubb (1821-1885); and Edward handed over part of his shares to Alfred when he moved to Burlington, New Jersey and retired in 1840.  These iron works, based on charcoal and old technology, suffered serious competition from the anthracite blast-furnace operations beginning to appear in the 1840s.  Hagley holds a number of account books and letterbooks for the numerous furnace sites, and these include store sales, wages, and laborers' expenses for boarding and hauling ore, plus some records with Philadelphia iron merchants and records of shipping along the Tidewater Canal.  Correspondence with Isabella Furnace in Chester County (1840-1847) is in this collection as well.  [See also Grubb Family Papers at HSP]

            Hagley also holds the Orrick, Grubbs & Parker Records, 1837-1846  (26 letters)  which show receipts and correspondence about shipments of iron from the Grubb furnaces and resale to manufacturers along the east coast.

Jared Pratt began his career in Wareham, MA when he and his uncle, Isaac Pratt, established a forge, foundry, silting mill, cotton mill and general store in about 1819.  Jared sold his shares in the firm (established as Wareham Iron Company in 1828) in 1834.  Two years later he and his son Christopher purchased the Fairview Rolling Mill on the banks of the Susquehanna River just North of Harrisburg, and in the next years added another foundry and two nail mills.  The mills continued for years to come, and were sold to James McCormick in 1859.  Eight account books spanning the years 1837-1859 and letters sent for 1842-45 comprise the bulk of the  Jared Pratt & Son, Records, 1837-1859 (1.2 linear feet); they  describe the operations of the forge, foundry and nail works Jared Pratt & Son constructed both in Fairview and Harrisburg.  The collection also contains information on work, wages, and production costs as well as the costs of coal and pig iron and associated machinery.  [See also Middleboro Historical Museum, Middleboro, MA]

The small collection of early Pennsylvania ironmaster in Robert Coleman, Papers, 1785-1825 (16 items) consists of correspondence and receipts pertaining to the purchase of various lands.  Coleman, an immigrant from England who began as a clerk in a Cornwall iron forge, owned three iron forges and had interests in several others by his death in 1825.  His Elizabeth Furnace in Lancaster County, PA was a major supplier of cannon and shot to the Revolutionary armies; after the Revolution Coleman led the Federalist Party in Lancaster County and acquired shares in many local furnaces.  [See also Peter Grubb, Cornwall Furnace, Salford Furnace, Elizabeth Furnace]

Numerous additional small collections supplement larger ones at Hagley.  The Principio Company, Inventory, 1781 (1 item) lists the possessions of the Principio Company at Kinsgbury and Lancashire Furnaces.  The four-page inventory lists land, slaves, stock, and equipment of these major Colonial American iron-making establishments.  Before the Revolution, this English based company owned forges and furnaces first in Cecil County, MD but then expanding in MD and VA.  The Principio  Company produced over half of the Colonial American pig iron exported to England.  The Rumford Dawes Letterbook, 1798-1799 (1 vol.) illustrates the prices, qualities, and transportation of iron from the New Castle County slitting and rolling mills, which sent nails and other goods to New York until about 1811.

Alan Wood Steel Company, Records, 1728-1950 (57.3 linear feet) document the business activities of this early producer of iron saws, shovels and other agricultural implements as well as steel sheets in the Delaware River Valley.  James Wood , Jr. (1771-1851), operated the Delaware Iron Works at Wooddale, DE, from 1826-1832, in partnership with his son Alan (1800-1881) and at Conshohcken, PA, after 1832, where they moved the iron works to obtain better access to raw materials from the Schuylkill Canal.  James Wood & Son also opened a shop and store in Philadelphia.  The Hagley Library also owns the James Wood Partnership Agreement, 1834.  The records of the James Wood & Son and the company’s various incarnations (until being organized as Alan Wood & Co. in the 1880s) include letter books (1844-50) as well as inventories of property and scattered account books for the iron works in both Woodale and Conshohcken, 1728-1860.  The account books also contain the accounts of the company’s stores in Wilmington and Philadelphia as well as time records (1854-1864) for workers at the Delaware Iron Works.   The Alan Wood Business Papers, 1838-1875 (2 vols.) consist of an account book and ledger book for 1831-1841 and 1840, and a memorandum on the Wood family dated 1875.  The Wood Family Papers, 1760-1929 (I reel microf.) are a small selection of the large, privately-held body of Wood family materials.  This reel includes letters reflecting on the effects of the panic of 1857, the apprenticeship agreement of Alan Wood with a young boy in 1826, and promissory notes dating from the early century.

            In 1839 Jesse L. Stelwagon, who operated a foundry on Old York Road outside Philadelphia, formed a partnership with William Roderfield, a former clerk, and silent partner, Jacob Carrigan, Jr., owner of a saddlery hardware store in the city, that became Roderfield & Company.  The new foundry made a wide range of malleable iron produced such as locks, gun parts, hinges, and small tools.  Stelwagon retired and sold his interest to Carrigan in 1840, and the firm then continued until Carrigan purchased the entire inventory in early 1842, the foundry discontinued production, and Carrigan continued his hardware store.  Hagley holds a Journal covering 1839-1842, through the two partnerships, containing receipts and expenditures for rent, wages, and supplies.  The end of the Journal lists out the complete inventory made in 1842.

            The Betts & Seal Records, 1828-1867 (9.5 linear feet)  reveal the business of three generations of founders and machinists in Wilmington, DE, linked to numerous other iron producers and railroad concerns.  The Quaker Mahlon Betts came to Wilmington in 1812, where he built a foundary in 1828; in 1836 he formed a partners with Samuel N. Pusey as Betts & Pusey to manufacture railroad cars.  Upon retirement Betts leased the firm to his son Edward, who continued the business as Betts & Stotsenburg; a succession of reconstituted partnerships carried on the business until the foundry closed in December 1867.  Most of the holdings at Hagley consist of account books, plus a wage book for the years 1848-1868.  Purchases of scrap iron, coal and charcoal acquisition, oyster shells used for flux, and moulding sand shipped from New York and New Jersey.  Order Books (1828-1849) include sketches of parts made in the foundry, and a Debit Ledger (1844-1846) is especially rich in detail about customers at powder mills, textile mills, paper mills, and iron works in the region.  Extensive correspondence with buyers and sellers add cultural and personal dimensions to this collection.

The Hollingsworth, Harvey & Company Records, 1835-1877 (3 linear ft.) cover the operations of a foundry in Wilmington, Delaware that produced boilers, locomotive engines, and industrial machinery.  Other firm partners over the years included Jocob Pierson, inventor of the seed drill, and Amor Harvey, a Wilmington businessman.  The records include Journals (1841-1867); Day Books (1836-1838, 1854-1856); Ledgers (1835-1856); Cash Books (1841-1868); Household Expenses (1869-1877); and letterbooks covering 1863 to 1865.

            Iron Industry Miscellany, 1790-1892 (25 items) includes letters between suppliers and iron masters as the Potts-Rutter works, Montour Iron Company, Etna Works (Pittsburgh), Philadelphia city pump works, and other businesses linked to the iron forges of the region.

            Scholars will also want to peruse Hagley's holdings of pamphlets, pattern books, and broadsides related to iron mining, forges and furnaces, and ironmasters's reflections on the industry.  These are catalogued under the surnames of individual owners, promoters, and furnaces.

V.        TRANSPORTATION:  ROADS, CANALS, RAILROADS

            Of great value to transportation researchers is Hagley's "Map Project Data Files," which emanated from the Regional Economic Research Center between 1978 and 1981.  The research center affiliates undertook to document and map the growth of transportation from New York to Virginia in the period 1750 to 1850, some of which was published in "Canals and Railroads of the Mid-Atlantic States, 1800-1860" (1981).  But much additional material remained in manuscript form.  Scholars will find in a card file a complete list of all canal and turnpike projects chartered in the five states within the research region, as well as data from company reports, county histories, and secondary literature.  Bridges, ferries, and railroads are included as well.  Steamboats and stages were documents only partially.  The documents cover origins, bankruptcies, construction and maintenance, physical characteristics, engineering qualities, internal communications, and other information about the region's transportation companies.  Numerous maps of terrain and surveys accompany the documents, tables, and raw data.  The collection measures 8 linear feet.

            Another aspect of the Hagley’s collection pertaining to canals is a selection of maps that show the Mid-Atlantic’s transportation network of canal, roads, and railroads.  Among these maps is one prepared by Richard Cowling Taylor entitled Map illustrative of the statistics of the coal trade of Pennsylvania: showing the relative positions of the various anthracite & bituminous coal fields; also the railroads, canals & navigable waters, 1848.   In Canal Boat Miscellany, 1858-1865 (39 items) are registrations of canal boats operating out of Philadelphia, bills of transfer for sales of boats, reports of dimensions and capacities, and owners' licenses for operation.

            Few accounts and general records of ferrymen or ferry lines have survived anywhere in North America.  Hagley holds one small collection, Kaighn's Point and Philadelphia Ferry Company, Records, 1855-1888, which show the joining of an old, Camden, New Jersey line dating from 1816 (formed by the Pennsylvaniaand New Jersey Steam-Boat Company), to investors in New York and Philadelphia.  Materials of value in this collection generally date from the 1870s to 1880s.

            The very large Stevens Family Papers, 1669-1959 (26 reels microf., Hagley holds reels 8 to 23) offers an extensive view of early steamboat promotion, construction, and perfection.  In the third generation of the family, John Stevens (1749-1838) collaborated with his brother-in-law Robert R. Livingston and the mechanic and merchant Nicholas J. Roosevelt to produce in 1804 the "Little Juliana," a twin-screw propulsion boat.  In 1806 he started work on the "Phoenix."  Meanwhile Stevens and Robert Fulton completed their first steamboat and got a monopoly grant for steam navigation in New York.  Stevens sent the "Phoenix" to the Delaware River, and by the 1820s he and his sons had a connecting stage service across the middle of New Jersey to Philadelphia using the "Phoenix" across the channel.  Stevens also had been building railroad lines since 1815, when he secured the first charter in America to create a line between Trenton and New Brunswick.  His sons Robert Livingston Stevens (1787-1856) and Edwin A. Stevens (1795-1868) carried on these and other railroad building plans, including the Camden & Amboy RR and Transportation Company founded in 1830 which replaced the old stage line.  The sons also accepted contracts with the Navy to develop floating batteries.  The microfilm at Hagley includes the steamboat controversies with Fulton, Livingston, and Aaron Ogden; stagecoach line business papers; steamboat correspondence, supplying, and experiment reports; numerous reflections on canals, dams, improvements to ports, military fortifications, and technical inventions.  Originals are at the New Jersey Historical Society.

            The Ford Family Business Papers, 1803-1868 (.5 linear feet) consist of two volumes of the official records of the Road Commissioners of Christiana Hundred, the institution that was responsible for the building and maintenance of roads within the township.  The first of these volumes, a minute book (1838-1868) contains deliberations and orders to build and maintain roads.  The second, a journal (1803-1858) lists wages and supply expenditure for roadwork.  Together, these volumes provide scholars the ability to study the traditional local system of road management during a period in which private turnpikes were beginning to complement local road systems.  The collection also contains a daybook tentatively attributed to Isaac Ford (1829-1836) which has scattered entries concerning a small coal mining business and the driving of tunnels and the building of mine railroads.  One of Isaac Ford’s household ledgers (1820-1868) and a household daybook belonging to William Ford (1833-1856) contain rural household accounts as well as additional accounts concerning roadwork.  See also “agriculture.”

            The Wilmington and Kennett Turnpike Company Records, 1811-1921, include minute books (1859-1920), sundry reports (1839-1919), stock certificates (1811-1919), toll records (1814-1919), and other company records. [Same as Series B of Pierre S. du Pont Records?]  The turnpike was incorporated in 1811 to build a stretch of road from Wilmington to Kennett, Pennsylvania; it was opened for traffic in January 1813.  Most stockholders owned land nearby.

            The William H. Wilson Notebook, 1831-1836 (1 reel microf.) charts an early engineering career with the Philadelphia & Columbia RR and the Philadelphia & Reading RR, estimates of costs, plans for railroad bridges and stations, tunnels, and other elements of construction.  Wilson began as a canal surveyor, but by 1827 was engaged full time in railroad surveying and construction.

The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company Letterbooks, 1844-1878 (7.1 linear feet) contain the outbound letterpress copybook (1848-1848) of Chief Engineer and Superintendent Edwin A. Douglas.  The largely technical letters in this volume document the design and construction of the company’s canal, railroads, and mines.  The company, a major anthracite mining and transportation firm operating in eastern Pennsylvania between 1822 and 1954, built the Lehigh Canal, the original Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad, the gravity railroad in Mauch Chunck, and a wire-rope producing factory as well as other ventures.  These records reveal the pioneering technical endeavors of the canal company.  The book also contains documents discussing the firm’s transition from open-pit to deep mining and operating problems.  The William Reed and George Ruddle letterbooks record the finances associated with transportation and sale of coal and the operation of the canal.  Hagley’s collections also includes several bound books that refer to legal matters and engineer reports as well as a map of the company’s coal mining property.  See also Lehigh Coal Mine Company, Records, 1792-1829, a small collection showing the original subscribers, leases, and deeds of a predecessor concern to the LC&N.

The Thomas Earp Miscellaneous Papers, 1813-1868 (11 items) supplement the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company records.  Earp, a merchant and philanthropist, also became a manager of the canal company and in 1841 helped bail out the company from economic trouble with large loans.  This collection is mostly reflective material evaluating Earp's many contributions.           

The Newcastle and Frenchtown Turnpike was incorporated in 1830 as a merger of two earlier canal and railroad companies that linked New Castle, Delaware and Frenchtown, Maryland.  The line serviced steamboats as well, and by the mid-1830s became a railroad line as well and before long, the turnpike was abandoned.  Hagley holds one microfilm reel of minute book records about planning, constructing, and operating a very early railroad, the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad.         

            The small firm of  McManus Flynn & Company, Account Books, 1846 (2 volumes) contains both names of laborers and amounts paid, but also contractor’s expenses, including payments for boarding and meals, construction materials, services and wages.  The volumes provided insight to the workers employed—mainly Irish immigrants and Pennsylvania Germans from Berks County—their wages and other related expenses.

            Thomas Gilpin was a Quaker merchant and early manufacturer from Chester County, Pennsylvania.  Thomas Gilpin, Miscellany, 1768-1772 (32 pp.) contains estimates, drafts, surveys and sketches for the construction of a series of canals to connect the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay.  Gilpin advocated these canals because he owned flour mills at Millington, MD and near Wilmington, DE and the canals would allow him to move supplies more efficiently.  His plan for the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Company was eventually completed in 1829.

The Schuylkill Navigation Company built a canal from Philadelphia to the anthracite coal field near Pottsville, at Mount Carbon, along the Schuylkill River in 1816-1824.  The canal, which included America’s first canal tunnel, generated traffic that rivaled that of the tonnage on the Erie Canal.  Eventually, however, the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad nearly drove the canal out of business by providing faster, more efficient transport; in years thereafter, the canal company struck deals with the local railroad to share traffic, and in 1870 the canal leased its property to the railroad.  Schuykill Navigation Company, Records, 1815-1947 (6 reels microform) include account books and registers of stocks and bonds, registers of boats in service (1849-1851), Board of Manager’s minutes (1815-1947), stockholders’ minutes (1851-1947), the charter and supplements (1815-1869) printed annual reports (1821-1870) and records from the enlargement of the canal in the mid 1840s.  The Schuylkill Navigation Company, Subscription List for Loans, 1823-1824 is a small notebook that records the subscribers to the company’s loans.  Included among subscribers are: Joshua Lippincott, George Morris, Thomas and John G. Biddle, Joseph Norris of the Bank of Pennsylvania, Henry Nixon of the Bank of North America, Joseph S. Lewis of the Philadelphia Contributorship, William Jones of the American Fire Insurance Co., and John B. Palmer of the Mutual Assurance Co.  [See also Reading Company Records below].  There are also a series of printed materials from the Schuylkill Navigation Company and the Pennsylvania government pertaining to schedules of payments on shares, information for stockholders, information on rates, government reports, and acts of legislature concerning the canal.  In addition, the John Nicholson, Papers, 1772-1819 (27 reels of microfilm) contains business accounts for the Delaware & Schuylkill Canal Company.

            John Watson of Buckingham Township, PA, surveyed for the engineering corps of the Delaware Division Canal which connected Bristol and Easton.  Since the canal suffered from poor engineering and design, significant improvement and redesign was necessary.  John Watson, Engineering Notebooks, 1830-1832 (5 volumes) are the result of Watson’s work to repair the canal.  Three volumes contain the location survey after engineers had laid out the route that give the bearing of the canal and an accounting of all structures destroyed or damaged by construction as well as land taken from owners along the route. A fourth volume is a pocket notebook of surveyor's tables to be used in connection with operating a transit.  The fifth volume, Watson's pocket field notebook covering the years 1830-1832, records local property surveys as well as work on the canal, along with small land transactions that may represent right-of-way purchases for the canal.  Taken together, these volumes illustrate the canal construction process.

            The Beaver Meadow Railroad and Coal Company Records, 1833-1863 (2 vols.) show stock transfers in many years of company operations, and especially the increasing degree of small scale investment.  The company, incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1830, linked the Lehigh Canal to the Carbon County coal mines.  Promoted by Nicholas and Edward R. Biddle, it was to connect with trunck lines stretching from New York to Pittsburgh and Erie, but it was superceded by other railroads by the 1860s.  [See other records at the Pennsylvania State Archives]

            In the Mine Hill and Schuylkill Haven Railroad Company Records, 1828-1951 (15 linear feet) are extensive company minutes, securities records, legal records, and reports to various agencies.  A limited amount of correspondence for the pre-Civil War years demonstrates the activities of the company's organizers in the Pottsville area.  The railroad was incorporated under Pennsylvania law in 1828 and leased by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company in 1864; built first as a canal to link trading and mining, it had over fifty branch canals and extensive stables for canal horses in this rich mining region.  Locomotives replaced horses starting in 1847, and new track began to extend over Broad Mountain into new mining regions.  By the Civil War era the canal operations were linked to the Lehigh Valley Railroad and its subsidiaries, and successfully avoided absorption into the Reading Railroad system for some years.

            The very large Scranton Family Papers, 1829-1940 (17.7 linear ft.) documents generations of mechanics and merchants who successfully made the transition into forge and railroad operations during the first half of the nineteenth century.  After working in lumbering, George W. Scranton (1811-1872) moved into forge work with his brother, Selden T. Scranton and became the owner of New Jersey iron furnace operations by 1841 (see Scranton Family Papers above) with William Henry the reputable gunsmith (see Henry Family Papers  above).   Together, Henry and the Scranton brothers bought land where there were rich coal and iron ore deposits in the Lackawanna valley in 1840; they built a furnace for smelting but struggled to use the new technologies of anthracite burning.  With their secure prior reputations, the men easily acquired bank and private capital for a rolling mill and nail factory, and then railroad rails.  In 1853, after moving through various partnerships, they incorporated as the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Company; thereafter, the men bought and consolidated a few local railroad companies, though they struggled with poor management, difficult economic circumstances, and stiffening competition in the railroal business until well after the Civil War.  The Oxford Furnace remained in operation through the years.  This collection of some 6,800 items of correspondence and business accounts, details the early Oxford operations, financial and technological struggles of the partnerships and manufactories, and the transition into railroad ownership and management during the 1840s and 1850s.  See also the Lackawanna Historical Society in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

            The Tyrone and Lock Haven Railroad Company Account Book, 1857-1859 (1 vol.) contains only the treasurer's receipts and accounts payable for this period.  After construction of the roadbed began, the Panic of 1857 put the company out of business; some of its company assets were absorbed into the Pennsylvania Railroad system later.

            In the James J. Shryock Business Papers, 1856-1863 (.16 linear ft.) there is important evidence about the adjustment of railroad builders and promoters to local production and distant demand.  Shryock originally planned to build a small local rail connection linking Meadville to Philadelphia; when oil was discovered in 1859, construction expanded to link the line to the New York & Erie RR, which connected the small town to both New York and Cincinnati.  The collection includes numerous loose accounts and receipts for rail shipments, and orders for deliveries all along the line.

            After William Wurts discovered anthracite coal at what is now Carbondale, PA, he and his brother began to mine and transport the coal by river to Philadelphia and New York.  In order to improve their transportation of the river, the brother organized the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company to build a canal from Honesdale, PA to Kingston, NY beginning in 1825.  Wurts Family Papers, 1699-1864 (9 linear feet) contain correspondence, receipts, bills, accounts, estimates, petitions, journals, pamphlets, and records of payments to canal contractors that detail the brothers’ efforts to solicit investment, negotiate with politicians, and interact with contractors, in order to build the Delaware and Hudson Canal.  

The Union Canal Company was incorporated in 1811 to link the Schuylkill River near Reading with the Susquehanna River in Middletown.  Lotteries financed much of the construction beginning in 1822 and ending in 1827.  Delays caused by the War of 1812 and the depression following caused difficulties in opening the canal;  once it opened it was technologically obsolete due to its narrow width  and passage over limestone bedrock for part of its length, so that boats bigger than 25 tons could not pass.  In short, the canal was not competitive for long-distance traffic.  Union Canal Company, Records, 1792-1875 (2 linear feet) contain minutes of the board of managers (1827-1864), minutes of annual stockholder’s meetings (1821-1875), a stock subscription list (1845) and documents relating to the appointment of lottery commissioners (1818, 1820).  The Union Canal Company, Records, 1837-1859 (550 items), consist of letters to Benjamin B. Lehman, resident engineer (1855-1858) discussing daily operating problems.  The records also contain records of ships passing through the canal. Union Canal Company, Records, 1792-1875 also include a minute book (1798-1800) for the Delaware & Schuylkill Canal and a memorial to the Pennsylvania legislature for a loan in 1810 from the Schuylkill & Susquehanna Navigation Co.  Hagley also has a variety of printed materials pertaining to official reports from the president and managers of the Union Canal Company.  [See also Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission in Harrisburg, PA]

            The John B. Jervis Papers, 1820-1884 (13 reels) offer a detailed portrait of a civil engineer who worked on the Erie Canal from 1817 to 1823, then superintended construction of the Delaware & Hudson Canal from 1827 to 1830, and then became chief engineer of the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad as well as other canal and railroad projects in New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Ft. Wayne, Pittsburgh and other burgeoning cities.  The papers include diagrams, report about labor and construction conditions, letters, maps, and plans for using hydraulic technology; some papers bear on matters related to professionalization.  

            The extensive collection of Penn Central Corporation Records, 1793-1976 (8,000 linear feet) contains scattered information about the line's predecessors, including the Pennsylvania Railroad (1847-1854), the New York Central Railroad Company (1853-1867), the New York & New Haven line (1844-1872), and the Hartford & New Haven line (1833-1872).  Researchers are urged to puruse this collection for specific correspondence and company records.

            Contained in, Philadelphia Electric Company, Records, 1836-1953 (36 reels of microfilm) is the minute book of one of the company’s predecessor companies, the Tide Water Canal Company (1836-1896) which operated along the west bank of the Susquehanna River from Havre de Grace to the Pennsylvania state line in conjunction with the Susquehanna Canal Company of Pennsylvania.

            Contained in the huge collection of  Reading Company Records, 1795-1979 (1,131 linear ft.) are minutes, account books, securitites records, reports and numerous agreements for the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company’s, which built a network of railroads, canals and coal mines during 1833-1896.  A limited number of securities records, account books, company reports, and minutes for the pre-Civil War era.

            Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Preliminary survey for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 1799 (1 reel of microfilm with 6 maps) shows the original route of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.  Latrobe, one of the foremost architects and engineers in the United States, designed a canal for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal company that was to join the Delaware River with Chesapeake Bay via Christiana River and Elk Creek.  However, the economic difficulties precipitated by the renewal of the Napoleonic Wars halted work on the canal.  

            In miscellaneous and small collections, scholars can find important corroborating information about early Delaware Valley canals and railroads.  The William E. Morris, Notebook, 1839  (1 vol.), of a noted area civil engineer and railroad executive of the Juniata and Western Division Canals, records fourteen separate specifications for canal and railroad work.  Hagley also holds numerous pamphlets and notices of the Delaware & Raritan Canal Company dating in the 1820s to 1860s.  Leading Philadelphia engineers, scientists, technicians, and manufacturers founded the Franklin Institute in 1824 to promote and advance technical progress.  Minute books and subcommittee reports located in Franklin Institute Committee on Science and Arts, Records, 1824-1900 (28 reels of microfilm) provide insight into the development of early American technology including that of railroads.  In the Thomas Savery Journal, 1857-1890 (.5 linear ft.) is a diary of his various jobs in  railroad machine shops in Columbua and Altoona, Ohio (1857-1866).

A major portion of Hagley’s canal materials consists of government reports, speeches and bills relating to canal expansion.  These reports include both federal and state policy and reflection;  there are many printed books and announcements authored by various companies, as well as promotional tracts and reports from the various presidents and boards of managers.  Representative of these records is a series concerning the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company.  The collection includes a report from the United States Congress House Committee on Roads and Canals, Chespeake and Ohio Canal Company: (To accompany bill H.R. No. 416), March 3, 1836: Mr. Mercer, from the Committee on Roads and Canals, submitted the following documents, which were ordered to be printed (book) and a company report, Report of the President of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, giving a statement of the amount expended on the canal from its eastern terminus to dam no. 5, and thence to Cumberland (book).  Also, the collection contains a series of printed letters from the company to various governors in the region.  For example, there are a half dozen letters to the Governor of Maryland: Communication from Francis Thomas, President of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company to the Governor of Maryland, 1840 (book).    Other canals represented by similar materials are: the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company, the Hampshire and Hampden Canal Company, MA, the Delaware and Raritan Company, and the Susquehanna Canal Company.  In addition, there are also numerous reports from the Pennsylvania Board of Canal Commissioners as well as the Maryland General Assembly House of Delegates Committee on Internal Improvements concerning canals.  The Hagley also holds a variety of broadsides announcing canals advertising new canals, or informing stockholders about dividends and stock certificates.

VI.       BANKING, FINANCE, INSURANCE

A.     Banking

Hagley's holdings include a large number of charters, acts of incorporation, subscriber lists, annual reports about stocks, and pamphlets about the efficacy of national and state banking.  Among the most important for the study of early American economic history are:

The Wilmington Savings Fund Society Records, 1831-1964 (70 linear ft.) are a rich source for studying a "safe depository for the earnings of working people."  Begun as a mutual savings bank, and then chartered by Delaware, the company did not have stockholders but rather distributed all profits to depositors.  WSFS provided home mortgage loans from its earliest years.  Of special value to early American historians are the Account Books (1856-1958), Customers' Ledgers (1832-1909); Day Books (1832-1892); Deposit Day Books (1832-1917); Withdrawal Orders (1834-1929); and Withdrawal Receipts (1837-1879).   The Records also include a schedule of interest rates paid to stockholders.

The Wilmington Savings Fund Society, Schedule of Interest Paid on Deposits, 1832-1856 (1 item).

The Farmers Bank of Wilming, Charter and By-Laws, 1826.

The Farmers Bank of the State of Delaware, Records, 1785-1900. (4 reels microf.)  Incorporated in 1807, the Farmers Bank stock was held primarily by the state but privately managed.  The bank originally had as its goal making loans to small farmers, and had branches in each Delaware county; it was to oversee certain state and county government funds, and all income from stock holding was to be applied to the state school system.  Series I is by far more valuable than Series II for early economic history scholarship; it contains correspondence covering 1785-1845.

The Farmers and Mechanics Bank (of Pennsylvania), Act of Incorporation, Charter, and By Laws, 1809.

Connections of the Schuylkill Navigation Company to numerous banks and a subscription list of stockholders for 1823.

Debates in the correspondence, newspapers, and pamphlet literature about the First and Second Bank of the United States, as well as about the nature of central banking, money supply, and arguments of important national figures in the political economy.

       A few counterfeit detectors dating from the ear of the First and Second BUS.

                         Reports on the Bank of North America, the Bank of Pennsylvania, and local                                   banks in New Castle County, Delaware.

       Directors lists of subscribers to the Second Bank of the United States.

The First Bank of the United States, 1791-1811, created at the urging of Alexander Hamilton to issue notes, collect taxes, serve as a depository for federal funds and to act as a lender of last-resort, was the nations first federal bank.  Hagley’s collections contain a variety of documents of interest.  The most numerous of these documents is a series of pamphlets discussing the renewal of the Bank’s charter in 1811.  These include: (1) Jesse Atwater, Considerations, on the approaching dissolution, of the United States Bank / in a series of numbers (1 book, 22 p.), (2) Mathew Carey, Desultory reflections upon the ruinous consequences of a non-renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, 1810 (1 book, 8 p.).  Also, there are a series of bound letters, Mathew Carey, Letters to Dr. Adam Seybert, Representative in Congress for the city of Philadelphia, on the subject of the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States, discussing the Bank charter renewal.  Additional pamphlets include published speeches and debate given in Congress relating to the renewing of the Bank charter.  These are (1) Debate in the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania, on Mr. Holgate's resolutions relative to the Bank of the United States / January, 1811; reported by W. Hamilton (1 book, 54 p.), (2) Speech of Henry S. Geyer, Esq. in reply to the Hon. Thomas H. Benton and Robert W. Wells, Esq. on the expediency of a national bank, the validity of the currency, and the Americna (sic!) system (1 book, 47 p.), and (3) Speech of Mr. P. B. Porter on the bill for renewing the charter of the Bank of the United States/ in the House of Representatives, Jan, 18, 1811 (1 book, 15 p.).  Finally, a published copy of an official bank report, Report of the committee appointed on the fourth instant, to prepare an address to both Houses of Congress, 6th December, 1799, committed to a committee of the whole House, on Monday next (1 book, 7 p.), is in Hagley’s collection.  See also, "Letter to the directors of the banks of the city of Philadelphia, on the curtailment of discounts . . . " an anonymous pamphlet printed by Mathew Carey in 1816.

The Girard Bank List of Stockholders, 1839 (1 item) provides a small glimpse into the operations of Stephen Girard's substitute bank after the First BUS charter expired in 1811.  This was a private bank, although housed in the First BUS building; when Girard died in 1831 fellow businessmen tried to carry on its affairs, including getting a charter for a new "Girard Bank of the City of Philadelphia."  When the Second BUS failed, the Girard Bank was soon to follow in 1842.  After four years it reopened, and continued under various names until 1926.  This document is 45 pages of stockholders' names.

In the middle of the nineteenth century savings banks, as opposed to merchant banks, began to appear in the Mid-Atlantic.  One of these banks, the Wilmington Savings Fund located in Wilmington, DE, a mutual savings bank founded in 1831 and receiving a state charter the next year deposited its records at Hagley.  The Wilmington Savings Fund Society, Records, 1831-1964 (70 linear feet) provide detailed administrative and accounting records for this savings fund intended to promote the opportunity for homebuilding and lending money for home mortgages.  Since the fund had no stockholders its depositors, mostly working people, received all fund profits.  In combination, administrative and accounting records show the growth of the fund from its infancy in 1831 through the various Panics and uncertainty of the nineteenth century to its maturity in the fist third of the twentieth century.  Additionally, individual customer records allow scholars to track individual’s deposits and loans.  The administrative records consist of board of managers minutes (1831-1931); investing committee minutes (1832-1952).  Account books include general ledger (1856-1958); customers’ ledgers (1832-1909)’ stock and bond ledgers (1892-1958); day books (1832-1892); deposit day books (1832-1917); withdrawal orders (1834-1929); loan books (1845-1900); withdrawal receipt books (1837-1879); and the First Book of Investments (1832-1853).  The Wilmington Savings Fund Society, Schedule of interest rates paid on deposits, 1832-1856 (1 item) lists the schedules of rates paid on deposits between 1832 and 1856 for this savings bank.  Note: the collection is subject to a 75 year time seal and data on living persons may not be used without consent of depositor.  Literary rights retained by the Wilmington Savings Fund Society.

Specific information about the function of banks for local businesses may be found in many individual company records.  See especially the Andrew Clow & Company, and the Du Planty, McCall & Company records (Archibald McCall was a director of the First BUS).

The Schuylkill Navigation Company, Subscription list for loans, 1823-1824 (1 item) is a small notebook that records the subscribers to the company’s loans.  Included among subscribers are:

Joshua Lippincott, George Morris, Thomas and John G. Biddle, Joseph Norris of the Bank of Pennsylvania, Henry Nixon of the Bank of North America, Joseph S. Lewis of the Philadelphia Contributionship, William Jones of the American Fire Insurance Co., and John B. Palmer of the Mutual Assurance Co.

Hagley holds numerous acts of incorporation for banks of all types, as well as addresses to stockholders, by-laws, charters, and published commentaries on banking.

B.     Stocks

            For information about stockholding in important early republic firms, see names of individual companies, insurance brokers, and entrepreneurs.  Hagley holds a few important printed sources detailing stock prices, including "Highest and Lowest Prices at the Stock Exchanges, New York, Boston, Philadelphia," (1 vol.) covering the early nineteenth century, extracted from the New York Commercial and Financial Chronicle, dated 1882.

C.     Financial Panics

1.  The Panic of 1819 affected manufacturers and merchants throughout the Mid-Atlantic.  John Potts, Business Records, 1799-1828, (6 volumes) reveals the problems Potts experienced due to the Panic when it forced him to close his ironworks, the Greenwood Forge and Furnace.  The Panic of 1819 also caused the Boulton Gun Works, on Bushkill Creek, PA—operated at this site and elsewhere by the William family beginning in 1760—to struggle.  Fragmentary account books (1807-1881), including daybooks, price books, sales ledgers, receipt books, factory rules, and company store records reveal the company’s struggles to remain profitable during the Panic.  Additionally, William Henry, Jr.’s correspondence documents operation of the Gun Works during the Panic and a contract dispute with the U.S. government.

      DuPlanty, McCall & Company Records, 1813-1844, which show bankruptcy of a cotton spinning and weaving business in the panic.

      Henry Family Papers, which document trauma during the panic while under contract with the national government to deliver firearms.

      See also "A Correct Table, Shewing the Net amount of Funded 6 Per Cent Stock of the United States . . from . . . January, 1819," (11 p.) Published in Boston, 1798.

2.  For reflections on the Panic of 1837 and its aftermath, see especially the reflections of Edmund T. Lukens, in the Scranton Family Papers, 1829-1940 (see “Iron Works” and “Railroads”); and the Wright Family Papers, 1785-1902; and the Joseph Shipley Papers, 1741-1898 (1.2 linear feet), correspondence relating to his involvement in the Anglo-American banking houses known as Brown Brothers & Co., Philadelphia, and Brown, Shipley & Company, Liverpool, and their efforts to negotiate with the Bank of England to save the firms’ credit in 1837, as well as his observations on the financial panic in general.  See "Commerce" for fuller entry about Shipley.

D.     Insurance

As with banking, insurance is represented in the collections at Hagley primarily through the printed materials promoting particular companies or the good effects of insurance, and through the individual family and company papers.  Some of the most important examples of the former include:

      The Mutual Assurance Company for Insuring Houses from Loss by Fire (Philadelphia), 1784.

      The Delaware Mutual Safety Insurance Company, 1835 (10 p.).

      The United States Insurance Gazette, and Magazine of Useful Knowledge, 1855 (1 vol. Only).

      Lancaster County Mutual Insurance Company, Constitution and By-Laws, 1853

      Union Mutual Insurance Company of Philadelphia, 1844 (pamphlet)

      "To the Stockholders," Columbia Insurance Company of Philadelphia, 1840, 1849

      Franklin Fire Insurance Company of Philadelphia, Charter and By-Laws, 1829

      American Fire Insurance Company (of Philadelphia), Act of Incorporation, 1810; address to the legislature, 1810.

      Phoenix Insurance Company of Philadelphia, Articles of Association, 1803; Act of Incorporation, 1804.

      New York Life Insurance & Trust Company, correspondence, 1832.

      Insurance Company of North America (Philadelphia), 1801.

      For valuable details about insurance from the perspective of company subscriptions, see especially:

      The Schuylkill Navigation Company (1815-1825), Subscription List of Loans, 1823-1824.

       E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company, Insurance Policies, 1840-1845, covering mainly commercial shipments of powder, and insurance against fires on wharves, plus a policy to insure against fire at the Henry Clay Mill.

      Insurance Policies, 1842-1863, George H. Gilbert & Company Papers  (72 items).  Policies against fire at his woolen mill, house, tenants' houses, all in Ware, Massachusetts.

      Helpful additional sources include Hagley's copy of the New York City Directory, 1820 (449 p.) which lists insurance rates and insuring partnership and firms.

E.      Financial Leadership

The John Nicholson Papers, 1772-1819 (27 reels microf.) offer a detailed portrait of an early banker, investor, promoter, and manufacturer from Philadelphia.  John Nicholson (1757-1800) was one of the three commissioners of accounts during the Revolution for the State of Pennsylvania, and then comptroller general of the state with powers as broad almost as Robert Morris had over continental finances.  Nicholson managed the financial affairs of the state from 1781 to 1793; at first a radical republican, Nicholson was nevertheless always staunchly concervative in financial affairs.  He was impeached in 1793 for diverting funds (presumably into private land speculating), acquitted, but then resigned all offices.  This collection describes Nicholson's duties and execution of them, his land deals in the Population Company, and then the Asylum Company, his speculation in Washington, DC, land, and his vast holdings in the western frontier.   These activities probably would not have been possible if Nicholson had not also been the driving force behind Pennsylvania's roads, canals, and institutional development -- including anthracite mining and steamboats.  The papers related to many different transportation companies are included in this collection.  Nicholson's paper empire collapsed in late 1796 during a financial crisis; he went to debtor's prison in 1799-1800, where he died leaving debts of over $4 million.  For additional records, see the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission.

            Although most Stephen Girard materials are at HSP, see Hagley's holdings of Dutilh & Wachsmuth Papers, Cope Family Papers, Phillips Family Papers, and sundry du Pont papers for additional details.