Bills and accounts in the collection are from London haberdashers, New York and Chicago household furnishing concerns, and Mineral Point grocers and dry goods merchants. They illustrate how an American gentleman dressed and equipped and ran his estate about 1875. A wide variety of letterhead stationery is included in this material.
William T. Vincent left Mineral Point about 1870 to operate a silver mine near Central City, Utah Territory and his letters give a vivid picture of mining speculation there. The papers which deal with Joseph Gundry's operations in the Mineral Point Zinc Company and the La Salle Zinc Company in Illinois from early in the 1870s to the close of the decade contain little information on the actual mining operations. However the Mineral Point ledger, 1874-1879, and excerpts from La Salle Zinc account books as well as annual statements and inventories give details on the financial side of the investment.
Among the business correspondence are the numerous letters from Joseph H. and William P. Gundry's land agents in Lincoln, Arcadia, and Plainview, Nebraska and Norman, Oklahoma Territory, where they invested extensively in real estate in the late 1880s. Other small groups of papers concern land investments in southwestern Wisconsin and various minor enterprises in which the Gundrys were involved. There is little in the collection that directly concerns Mineral Point except a few accounts dealing with the finances of the Methodist Episcopal Church there in the 1870s.
The small diaries kept by Joseph Gundry from 1869 to 1898 contain brief and scattered entries, dealing largely with local deaths, activities of members of the Gundry family, and occasional business activities. The daily cash accounts at the end of each diary are fairly complete. Miscellaneous bank and account books complete the collection.
Typewritten transcriptions of the diaries and of selected entries in the account books have been added to the collection and are in Box 5.
