Bangor Stone Ware Co. papers

Collection — Container: Col-0030

Identifier: Col-0030

Dates

Creation: 1893-1903

Creator

Bangor Stone Ware Co (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open to the public. Copyright restrictions may apply.

Biographical / Historical

The Bangor Stone Ware Company operated in Bangor, Maine between 1880 and 1917. Andrew (Anders Pehrsson) Persson, an immigrant from Sweden, was its founder. The company referred to itself as the "manufacturers of stone & fancy pressed ware of every description." A copy of "The Stoneware Manufactory at Bangor" chapter 24 in M. Lelyn Branin's book The Early Potters and Potteries of Maine (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978) is filed with the collection. It gives a good history of the company.

Full Extent

.3 cubic ft. (1 box; ca. 500 items)

Language of Materials

English

Metadata Rights Declarations

License: This record is made available under an Universal 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license.

Additional Description

Arrangement

The Bangor Stone Ware Company papers are filed alphabetically in one sequence, with one folder of unsorted (due to difficulties in reading the names) papers at the end of the box.

The collection was partially processed upon receipt in 1985. At that time, most of the names in the following list were extracted from the documents to facilitate entering them in the library's Termatrex indexing system. Eleven more names were found when the collection processing was completed in 1989. Those 11 are marked below with an asterisk.

Researchers will need to bear in mind the following caveats about this list: preliminary processing of the collection usually inverted corporate names based on personal names. That gives us "Goodrich, B. F. & Co." rather than "B. F. Goodrich & Co." The entries were also made exactly as they appeared on the cards, so that we get "McLeod, Nichols" and later "Nichols & McLeod" which probably refer to the same firm.

Other Finding Aid

Name index available at repository.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Purchased from the Paper Tiger, Wakefield, Massachusetts.

Summary

Consists of bills, orders, receipts, and letters received in the course of business. Includes short notes from firms supplying clay, letters of inquiry from prospective employees, specifications for pieces ordered, prices, utility company receipts, illustrated billheads, etc. These papers shed much light on the operation of a New England pottery company at the turn of the century, showing how it dealt with obtaining raw materials, marketing its wares, and supplying customers with finished products.