Brown University Library Collections
Business Collections
Return to Collections A to Z Index
-
Adams (George James)
George James Adams (1812-1888) had a long career as a textile manufacturer and agent in Rhode Island. He was the treasurer of the Greenwich Print Works (1856-1882); a business associate at the Arkwright Cotton Mills (Fiskeville, R.I., circa 1836); an employee at Adams Print Works (Fiskeville, R.I.), Kent Print Works (East Greenwich, R.I.), Orion Cotton Mills (Providence, R.I., circa 1860s-1870s), Bristol Print Works (R.I.), and Clyde Bleaching and Print Works; a part owner of the Rhode Island Bleach and Dye Works, Adams and Butterworth (Providence, R.I., 1862-1882); and the chief agent at Narragansett Print Works (East Greenwich, R.I., 1848-1854). The collection includes family letters and business correspondence (mostly letters to Adams), invoices and receipts, inventories, payroll and supply lists, deeds and contracts, and photographs. A large number of letters are from Thomas P. Richmond, a banker of Bristol, Rhode Island, probably affiliated with the Bank of Bristol. They communicate Richmond’s strong abolitionist feelings and include descriptions of slave uprisings such as the insurrection on the ship La Amistad in 1839, meetings of abolitionist societies, etc. Also discussed are Richmond’s other interests, including phrenology, electricity, epidemiology, mesmerism, animal magnetism, and ships. Another large part of the collection comes from Adams’ time as chief agent at the Narragansett Print Works. This material includes correspondence with textile dealers and related business agents, mostly from Rhode Island, Hartford, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Invoices, receipts, as well as accounts for advertising, raw materials, and shipping, are also included. The collection also contains documents related to other businesses, mostly in textiles, run by Adams throughout Rhode Island. The remainder of the collection relates to the extended Adams family, including George Harvey Adams, Mary Hodges Adams, Sarah Martindale Adams, George William Brown, and others. This material includes correspondence as well as legal documents, bills and receipts, inventories of estates, financial documents, correspondence, and photographs.
...more information
-
Brown (Harold)
The Harold Brown papers, dated from 1878 to 1920, include legal and business documents, personal and business correspondence, two unpublished manuscripts, miscellaneous bills paid, two cashbooks and an inventory of Harold Brown's estate.
...more information
-
Cramer Silver
The Cramer Collection, consisting of approximately 900 volumes, was compiled over several decades by Diana Cramer, Editor of Silver Magazine until her death in 1993, and author of a number of important articles on silver design and decorative arts. The principle strengths of the collection are in the history of silver design and silversmithing, worldwide, from early modern times to the present; however, also included are a range of materials on American decorative arts -- jewelry, glass, furniture, architecture -- from the colonial period through the early 20th century. The collection documents the craft process, as well as the end product, and includes trade catalogs, exhibition brochures, collectors guides, and miscellaneous research publications.
A title list may be viewed by doing a "word" or "author" search for "Cramer Silver" in JOSIAH.
The Cramer Collection supplements, and provides reference material for, the Gorham Company Archive.
...more information
-
French American Charitable Trust (FACT)
The French American Charitable Trust was founded in 1990 by the Feeney family, a family with roots in France and the United States, to address fundamental inequalities and injustices in society. Their mission was to help develop and sustain networks of community-based groups in the United States and France that educate, organize, and empower people to actively participate in developing public policies that directly affect their lives. They spent all of the money in the endowment between 1990 and 2012 and closed the foundation in 2012.
...more information
-
Frost Currency
The bank notes and documents in this collection were collected by Michael Freezy Frost. He was born in 1932 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and died on February 08, 2012 in McAllen, Texas. This collection contains examples of 26 pieces of currency, of varying types, issued in Rhode Island between 1775-1929, one bank note issued in Delaware in 1759, and 5 documents related to the fiscal history of 18th century Rhode Island.
...more information
-
Gorham
Archival records (approximately 6,200 linear feet, dating from 1831 to 2005) of the company founded in 1831 by silversmith Jabez Gorham in Providence, Rhode Island, and expanded under the leadership of his son John in the 1840s. At various times the company was the largest manufacturer of silver products, producer and distributor of ecclesiastical wares, and art bronze foundry in the United States.
The collection features many thousands of drawings and photographs of Gorham products, reflecting American taste from Victorian times to the present. It also contains corporate, personnel, costing, sales, and advertising records, as well as blueprints, plaster casts, and copper printing plates. Incorporated into the collection are the records of fourteen companies acquired by Gorham prior to its acquisition by larger companies, first by Textron Inc., then by Dansk International, and finally by Brown-Forman Corporation in 1991.
The Gorham Manufacturing Company records are not processed. A small portion of the records is accessible. See the Research Guide and the Inventory of Accessible Records linked below for further information.
...more information
-
Portuguese Africa
This collection is comprised of Portuguese language manuscript materials documenting the settlement and colonization of Angola (1690-1790 and 1828-1941), and includes correspondence between the Bank of Lisbon and the Azores from 1930-1931 and documents from the Cape Verde Islands in the first half of the 19th century. Topics covered by the materials in the collection include governance and administration, population, public education, finances, history, agriculture, navigation and commerce, military affairs and related topics.
...more information
-
White (William Wurts) Family
The William Wurts White family papers are comprised of correspondence and legal and financial documents related to settling the estates of William Wurts White (1841-1911), his sister, Ella C. White (-1904), and his son, Merwin White (1877-1920).
...more information
