The most important records of the Milwaukee Cement Company are the four volumes in which the proceedings of the meetings of stockholders and meetings of the board of directors were recorded from the inception of the organization in November, 1875 to 1948. Supplementing and amplifying the material in these volumes is a small group of correspondence and miscellaneous business papers, such as special committee reports, lists of stockholders, samples of stock certificates, and so on. These are scattered throughout a period of years from 1876 to 1935.
In addition there is one volume of minutes of the meetings of the board of directors of the Milwaukee Cement Railway Company, the subsidiary corporation directing the operation of the short line connecting the cement works with the main lines. These records cover a period from January 9, 1908 to June 23, 1914. A complete book of stock certificates from 1908 to 1915 shows the distribution and ownership of capital stock in the Company, and there is a small group of correspondence and papers of scattered dates from 1878 to 1918. Photographs, 1876-1909, are located in the Visual Materials Archive in Madison.
These records almost exclusively pertain to the management of the Milwaukee Cement Company. Virtually no records about the employees, sales, and production of the cement works remain. The only clues to the use of the cement are found in a group of “testimonial” letters photostated from reproductions in a pamphlet published about 1900, a copy of which Mr. William T. Berthelet loaned to the Wisconsin Historical Society. These give some indication of the uses to which building concerns and municipalities made of the cement.
With these manuscripts are filed thirteen maps and one blueprint showing the original property of the Company, later acquisitions of land, the buildings and railroad.
