With the exception of one fabric sample book all the records date from after the mill was acquired by the Appleton corporation in 1902. The greatest concentration is for the period 1954-1967 when the business was operated solely from the Reedsburg plant. Many records from the Appleton ownership period can no doubt be found in the Appleton Woolen Mills collection also at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Two fires, one in 1961 and the other in 1968, also contribute to the fragmentary nature of some of the record series.
The papers themselves are divided into four broad functional categories or series; each of these in turn contains a number of sub-series. The four main series are Correspondence and Subject File, Employment and Payroll Records, Financial and Sales Records, and Specifications and Samples. Complete descriptions and container lists for each series and sub-series follow this general scope and content note.
The Correspondence and Subject File dates approximately 1914-1964. The letters from the teens and twenties (1910-1920's) are almost exclusively to the main office in Appleton and reveal the close day-to-day supervision of the Reedsburg plant by company officials in Appleton. The files after 1946 are much more complete and deal with all phases of the mill's operation including design, finances, and especially marketing.
Employment and Payroll Records provide a picture of the mill's employees and their working conditions. Included are fairly complete payroll records (1905-1962), personnel records (1936-1961), lost time reports (1946, 1954-1963), and several smaller sub-series. Personnel files consist of the applications of people hired by the mill and usually a termination statement. These together with the lost time reports reflect working conditions such as lay-offs, and a high turn-over rate of unskilled workers.
The Financial and Sales Records are very fragmentary. Well documented are Reedsburg's expenditures for raw materials, supplies, and equipment, but information on sales and overall profit and loss of the company is more sparse. Sub-series within this category include General Ledgers (1903-1914), Journals (1903-1918, 1954-1962), Purchase Journals (1935-1956), Sales Invoices (1902-1966), and Weekly Financial Reports (1954-1958).
The technical side of the mill operation is best reflected in the
final series, Specifications and Samples. Included are exact specifications for goods at the carding, weaving, and dyeing stages as well as samples of Reedsburg's products at the carding, spinning, and weaving stages.
