Alexander Wilson papers

The personal and business papers of Alexander Wilson, a manufacturer of agricultural machinery just below Newark in Pencader Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware, include letters, envelopes, brochures, receipts, checks, and ephemera. As a successful businessman in New Castle County, Delaware, Wilson was involved in county government. From evidence in the collection, Wilson was a Trustee of the Poor (1877), Secretary of School District 54, New Castle County (1875), and a commissioner of the New Castle County Levy Court. The correspondence concerns customer inquiries about the equipment that Wilson manufactured and responses to Wilson's own inquiries and orders from other manufacturers and retailers of parts and supplies. Most letters are very brief: acknowledging orders, requesting clarification of orders, and stating transportation arrangements with railroad companies, especially the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, whose tracks lay not far from Wilson's plant. The strength of this collection lays in the advertising information presented on brochures, trade cards, and envelopes, which offer detailed information about agricultural machines, engines, parts, and tools, and often specify prices, sizes, and provide diagrams. Another strength of this collection lays in its record of a network of interdependent manufacturing concerns in the East and midwest, each producing goods necessary to the operation of the others.