#delaware history

Wishing a happy Easter Monday to those who observe the holiday (and a happy regular Monday to the rest of you!). These circa 1940 photos document the Easter display window and Easter baskets of the E.N. McConnell Restaurant in Wilmington, Delaware.

Edith N. McConnell was a confectioner and caterer in Wilmington, Delaware from the 1920s through the 1950s. Her catering business was located at 841 Market Street under the name “Miss McConnell Caterer, Confectioner.” McConnell was the successor to the D.B. Jones Company, a confectionary business begun in 1880.

Hagley Library’s Edith N. McConnell business records (Accession 1119) collection consists of consist of a three ledgers, containing business expenses and customer account books dating from 1937 to 1945, and from 1955 to 1956, while our collection of E.N. McConnell Restaurant photographs (Accession 1969.026) consists of 13 photographs, mostly dating from circa 1945, of wedding cakes, table settings, and the interior of her business. Some photographs show members of bridal parties, waiters, and restaurant staff, and a few of the individuals pictured are identified. To view these photographs online now, click here to visit their page in our Digital Archive.

When Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr. started at DuPont in 1964, he was only the fourth African American with a doctorate in chemistry to join the company.

Over the course of a thirty-two-year career, Memeger amassed fourteen patents and left his mark on some of DuPont’s most famous products, like Kevlar, the synthetic fiber found in bulletproof vests. His passion for chemistry has also influenced his career as an artist; Memeger’s pieces often explore geometrical themes reminiscent of molecular models.

On February 24, Hagley Library, in partnership with Clark Atlanta University and Bloomfield College, premiered Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr., Science Into Art, a special documentary chronicling the life of Dr. Wesley Memeger, Jr. Now, we’re please to announce the debut of a digital exhibit to accompany that work.

The exhibit, Dr. Wesley Memeger Jr.: Scientist, Artist, Activist, covers key points of Memeger’s life story and makes use of archival photographs as well as clips from an oral history of Dr. Memeger conducted by Dr. Jeanne Nutter in 2020, which also served as the primary source for the documentary. Visitors to the exhibit can listen as Memeger recounts his journey, beginning as the son and grandson of farmers in St. Augustine, Florida during the era of Jim Crow laws, following his interest in science to Clark College, a historically Black university in Atlanta, at the height of the movement for Black civil rights, to his career at DuPont and his intriguing transition from scientist to artist.

Today’s #WorkerWednesday shows employees of the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Co. etching designs on textile rollers at the company’s Print Works Division in Eddystone, Pennsylvania.

This circa 1937 photograph is part of the Hagley Library’s collection of Joseph Bancroft and Sons Company photographs (Accession 1969.025). Joseph Bancroft, an Englishman trained in textile weaving in Lancashire, established his own cotton mill on the Brandywine near Wilmington, Delaware in 1831. The firm was incorporated as the Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company in 1889.

To view more material from this collection online now, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.