The records are organized in six groups: Letterbooks; Correspondence, unbound; Correspondence Indexes, Financial Records, Minute Books, and Miscellaneous Papers, unbound.
Much of the correspondence-received and other records that must have once existed were not with the collection when it was received by the State Historical Society. In the Rust Owen subject file for 1939 is a letter from A. R. Owen, dated January 13, which discusses arrangements to dispose of papers for which there would be no future use.
Correspondence in the collection consists of two hundred eighty-three letterpress copy books and unbound correspondence.
Letterpress copy books (1875-1951), and incoming correspondence (1920-1951), relate primarily to the Wisconsin operations of the Rust Owen Lumber Company, the John S. Owen Lumber Company, and some of the related Owen firms. The correspondence files are supplemented by series of incorporation papers, minutes, ledgers, journals, cash books, payroll balances, operating statements, stock books, land inventories, and contracts. Many of the series of minutes and financial records are fragmentary, particularly for the companies operating outside of Wisconsin.
Three files of the John S. Owen Lumber Company are indexed in volumes 284 through 288 of this collection. File “A” of this group consists of executive correspondence; file “G” is general correspondence; and file “T” is correspondence relating to Three States Lumber Company.
Other correspondence includes that of Rust Owen Lumber Company, Owen-Oregon Lumber Company, California & Oregon Lumber Company, Del Norte Company Ltd., Three States Lumber Company, Gilbert Lumber Company, and Owen Box and Crating Company.
Income tax litigation records, particularly in the files of Three States Trust, show the changes in accounting procedures necessitated by the enactment of the Federal Income Tax Laws after 1913.
In the contents list below, the term “Corporation Records” is used to describe such miscellaneous papers as articles of incorporation, or those affecting financial arrangements, policy, administration, and litigation, with a few closely related letters. The term does not include records of ordinary operations of the various related companies. Other descriptive terms used in the container list are those commonly employed for business records.
