2.37 Cubic feet (consisting of 5 boxes, 1 folder, 4 oversized folders, 1 map case folder.)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Business ephemera
Ephemera
Date:
circa 1836-1980
Summary:
A New York bookseller, Warshaw assembled this collection over nearly fifty years. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana: Mining forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subseries 1.1: Subject Categories. The Subject Categories subseries is divided into 470 subject categories based on those created by Mr. Warshaw. These subject categories include topical subjects, types or forms of material, people, organizations, historical events, and other categories. An overview to the entire Warshaw collection is available here: Warshaw Collection of Business Americana
Scope and Contents:
This subject category-Mining consists of material related to the mining industry from the nineteeth and twentieth centuries. The documents span the period circa 1836-1980, but the majority of the materials date from circa 1870-1915. The overwhelming majority of this collection of material relates to mining businesses and related industries in North America, and particularly in the states and territories of the American Southwest (California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico). The collection consists of company correspondence, reports, and other matter; trade literature; investment prospectuses (for individual companies, for brokerage firms specializing in the mining industry, and for particular resources and locations, i.e., Canadian uranium or Coloradan gold); brochures advertising mining, milling, and smelting equipment, or promoting chemical processing techniques for mined materials; tool catalogs; stock certificates; blank forms for professional association membership; subscription blanks for professional journals; articles of incorporation, legislative charters, and other official papers; journal, magazine, and newspaper articles related to mining activity; photographs, stereographs, postcards, and business cards; and one map. Topics covered by the collection include prospecting; financial outlook and economics of the mining industry; working conditions in mines; the nature of mining activity; technological advances in tunneling, drilling, pumping, and refining techniques and equipment; business culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; and the social life of mining people. Mined resources covered by the documents in the collection include gold, silver, copper, lead, nickel, uranium, cobalt, zinc, coal, and various forms of stone, sand, and gravel.
Materials in the Archives Center:
Archives Center Collection of Business Americana (AC0404)
Forms Part Of:
Forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana.
Series 1: Business Ephemera
Series 2: Other Collection Divisions
Series 3: Isadore Warshaw Personal Papers
Series 4: Photographic Reference Material
Provenance:
Mining is a portion of the Business Ephemera Series of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Accession AC0060 purchased from Isadore Warshaw in 1967. Warshaw continued to accumulate similar material until his death, which was donated in 1971 by his widow, Augusta. For a period after acquisition, related materials from other sources (of mixed provenance) were added to the collection so there may be content produced or published after Warshaw's death in 1969. This practice has since ceased.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Some items may be restricted due to fragile condition.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Mining, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Sponsor:
Funding for partial processing of the collection was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF).
