University of Mississippi eGrove Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids Library November 2020 Finding Aid for the Andrew Brown & Son - R.F. Learned Lumber Company/Lumber Archives (MUM00046) Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/finding_aids Recommended Citation Andrew Brown & Son - R.F. Learned Lumber Company/Lumber Archives (MUM00046). Archives and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi. This Finding Aid is brought to you for free and open access by the Library at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. University of Mississippi Libraries Andrew Brown & Son - R.F. Learned Lumber Company/Lumber Archives MUM00046 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACCESS RESTRICTIONS Summary Information Open for research. This collection is stored at an off- site facility. Researchers interested in using this Historical Note collection must contact Archives and Special Collections at least five business days in advance of Scope and Contents Note their planned visit. Administrative Information Return to Table of Contents » Access Restrictions Collection Inventory Series 1: Brown SUMMARY INFORMATION Correspondence. Series 2: Brown Business Repository Records. University of Mississippi Libraries Series 3: Learned ID Correspondence. MUM00046 Series 4: Learned Business Records. Date 1837-1974 Series 5: Miscellaneous Series. Extent 117.0 boxes Series 6: Natchez Ice Company. Abstract Series 7: Learned Collection consists of correspondence, business Plantations records, various account books and journals, Correspondence. photographs, pamphlets, and reports related to the Andrew Brown (and Son), and its immediate successor Series 8: Learned company, R.F. Learned Lumber Company created Plantations Business during the years 1837-1974. Records. Series 9: Oversized Materials. Preferred Citation Series 10: Loose Andrew Brown & Son - R.F. Learned Lumber Volumes - Andrew Brown Company/Lumber Archives (MUM00046). Archives & Son. and Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi. Series 11: Loose Volumes - R.F. Learned Lumber Company. Return to Table of Contents » Series 12: Loose Volumes - R.F. Learned Lumber Company, 20th Century. HISTORICAL NOTE Compared with the other lumber companies whose records are held in the lumber archives at the University of Mississippi, the firm of Andrew Brown (and Son) and its immediate successor company, R. F. Learned Lumber Company, whose Natchez sawmill facility represents the oldest continuously operated enterprise of its kind in the United States, has received sub stantial research attention. Two extensive scholarly treatments, in particular, may be cited: Charles Wann Crawford's A History of the R. F. Learned Lumber Company 1865 1900 and Moore's Andrew Brown and Cypress Lumbering in the Old Southwest. Return to Table of Contents » SCOPE AND CONTENTS NOTE Collection consists of correspondence, business records, various account books and journals, photographs, pamphlets, and reports related to the Andrew Brown (and Son), and its immediate successor company, R.F. Learned Lumber Company created during the years 1837-1974. The records of the R. F. Learned Lumber Company comprise approximately 53 linear feet of unbound materials housed in 106 HoIlinger boxes and over 150 bound volumes of financial records. A folder by folder inventory has been prepared for materials held in the Brown Learned Collection. Generally, correspondence has been sorted out of purely business and financial records and has been filed separately. Any correspondence, however, clearly dealing with a specific financial record has been retained together with its associated financial record and the entire record then filed with corres pondence. No differentiation in these records has been made between personal and business correspondence, although the preponderance of personal corres pondence falls in the period before 1930. Records for Andrew Brown and Son begin in 1831 and end in 1869. After 1869 records are under the heading "R. F. Learned." Materials in the collection have been ordered in the following manner: A. Brown: Correspondence A. Brown: Business Records R. F. Learned: Corespondence R. F. Learned: Business Records Learned: Natchez Ice Co. Natchez Dept. Store (Andrew B. Learned in co op w Britton & Koontz Bank) Learned Plantations All correspondence (both Brown and Learned) has been sorted chrono logically by day, month, and year. Business records initially were processed according to a similar scheme. However, to expedite sorting this scheme was not pursued for all of the records. Consequently, some of the records have been sorted only by year, leaving part of the records more thoroughly sorted chronologically than others. As a result of indifferent custodial care prior to their donation the University of Mississippi, a significant portion of the Andrew Brown Collection is in very poor condition. Examples of water damaged, mud spotted, and insect ravaged records are not uncommon in these records. Other records have been subjected to human abuse in the form of excessive rubber cementing of records and tissue paper application. Before sorting, these documents were separated and cleaned although the exuberance of rubber cementing has reduced considerably the legibility and utility of many of the Brown records. While much care was exercised in cleaning and removing cement from the Brown records, nonetheless, some of the records could not be treated without causing further damage to the records. In some cases tissue paper had been affixed previously to the face of a record obscuring the record's content. Non lumber centered enterprises of the Learned Company have been separated and filed discretely (i.e., Natchez Ice Co., Natchez Dept. Store, and Learned Plantations). However, correspondence dealing with the Natchez Ice Company, the Natchez Department Store, etc., have been subsumed into the general correspondence of the R. F. Learned Company. Correspondence dealing with the Learned Plantations is held in Hollinger box preceding plantation business records. These plantation records are relatively extensive and span the years 1875 1957. The paucity of legal records (i.e. deeds, insurance policies, etc.) in the Learned Collection did not warrant their separation into a distinct category. Hence, all such records have been placed with business and financial records. The bound financial records embrace in nearly comprehensive fashion for Andrew Brown, daybooks, journals, ledgers, cashbooks, order books, tally books, and payroll records for the period 1831 1869. Bound financial records of R. F. Learned Lumber Company are comparably complete from 1872 to the mid 1950's, although gaps in the records for both com panies should be apparent in the inventory. Areas of potential interest to researchers in the Brown Learned records include materials relating to wage and slave labor (Andrew Brown day journals), although post bellum records do not denote racial cate gories for laborers. Nonetheless, the records should prove useful in providing data on broader issues of labor conditions and practices. Both the Brown and Learned records document fully company growth patterns, management practices, logging techniques, manufacturing procedures, adver tising strategies, and transportation mediums and innovations. The Brown records, especially, will be helpful to researchers interested in documenting provenance and in dating construction materials used in ante bellum Natchez. Return to Table of Contents » ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION Publication Information University of Mississippi Libraries 2005 Access Restrictions Open Use Restriction The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use", that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Processing Information Processed by University of Mississippi Department Special Collections Staff. EAD encoded finding-aid begun September 2005. Updated by Abigail Norris, March 2020. Alternative Formats Selected materials are available in the Civil War digital collection. Return to Table of Contents » COLLECTION INVENTORY Series 1: Brown Correspondence. Box 1: 1837-1839; 1841-1846 Box 2: 1847-1849 Box 3: 1850-1851 Box 4: 1852-1859 Box 5: 1860-1865 Box 6: 1866-1868, undated Return to Table of Contents » Series 2: Brown Business Records. Box 7: 1833; 1835-1844 Box 8: 1845-1849 Box 9: 1850-1854 Box 10: 1855-1858 Box 11: 1859-1860 Box 12: 1861-1866 Box 13: 1867-1869, undated Return to Table of Contents » Series 3: Learned Correspondence. Box 14: 1869-1875 Box 15: 1876-1878 Box 16: 1879 Box 17: 1880 Box 18: 1881 Box 19: 1882 Box 20: 1883 Box 21: 1884-1886 Box 22: 1887-1889 Box 23: 1890-1896 Box 24: 1897 Box 25: 1898 Box 26: 1899 Box 27: 1905; 1916-1923; 1926 Box 28: 1932-1934 Box 29: 1935 Box 30: 1936-1939 Box 31: January - September 1940 Box 32: October - December 1940 Box 33: January - March 1941 Box 34: April - July 1941 Box 35: