The Courtenay Manufacturing Company Records document the operations of a textile mill including the financing of the firm, the purchase of equipment and raw cotton, the sale of cotton products, and the hiring, employment and payment of workers. The operation of a merchandise store and homes for the mill’s workers is also recorded among these records. The records consist of four series: Correspondence, Accounts Receivable, Personnel Records, and Purchase Orders as well as oversize material which consists of the following types of records: Administration, Financial, Operations/Production and Personnel.

The Correspondence series 1910-1971 pertains to the purchase of machinery, sale of cotton products, and general plant operations. The bulk of these miscellaneous files date from the 1920s and 1930s and should be viewed as the scattered remnants of the firm’s general files. They include insurance policies, some census and tax reports, and information about the merger with Abney Mills.

The Accounts Receivable series 1931-1946 documents both the sale of cotton cloth and waste products as well as the transfer of supplies such as coal and wood to the company store for resale.

The Personnel series dating from the 1940s includes copies of cards for employees containing the names of their parents and children, hire date, occupation, and reason for leaving Courtenay. There are also some records of weekly wage records for some employees from the early 1940s.

The Purchase Orders series 1943-1955 consists of copies of the form used for requisitioning equipment and supplies but not raw cotton. The form was forwarded to the Abney Mills central purchasing office and has a description of items but not their price.

The oversize material documenting administrative activities include notes payable, 1902-1943, listing the person giving the note, amount of the note, rate of interest, and monthly interest payments; monthly statements of condition of the firm, 1895-1903, listing assets and liabilities with profit and loss; and corporate stock ledgers, 1894-1919 listing the names and addresses of shareholders and number of shares owned.

Among the oversize financial records are: cash books and journals, 1894-1949, recording daily financial transactions; ledgers, 1892-1949, recording the balances in various accounts; raw cotton purchase books, 1914-1943, listing owner, price per pound, weight of each bale, its number, shipper, date used or shipped, and in some cases, dockage and grade; the receivables/payables, 1943-1948, 1954-1956, 1968, covering gross payrolls by department, costs of some raw materials and various income accounts; the voucher record books, 1904-1943, identifying accounts debited and credited; tax returns for the corporation, 1922-1940 are drafts of IRS Form 1120 which includes taxes owed based upon income and balance statements with supplementary schedules; the trial balances, 1901-1946, recording monthly summarized balances of various accounts; and the copy of invoices from Courtenay’s agents Woodward, Baldwin, and Co., 1951-1954, indicating quantity and specifications of cloth orders shipped to its customers.

There are a variety of records documenting operations at the mill. The account sales records, 1925-1949, document the production of various cloth constructions for Courtenay’s agents with information about price, yardage, bale number, terms and delivery specifications. The cloth production books, 1918-1955, have daily production of types of cloth with monthly summaries. The production record books, 1895-1926, provide monthly summaries of types of cloth produced by yardage and weight, numbers of looms run, summaries of production costs including labor by department, and estimated cost per yard of cloth produced.

There are two miscellaneous oversize items: an inventory of supplies, parts, fuel and sizing as of August, 1958 and a record of the ginning of cotton bales, 1918-1924, which includes name of the bale’s owner, gross weight, weights of cotton seed and cotton, and amounts due for ginning.

The personnel oversize material includes various monthly, bimonthly, and weekly payroll records, 1934-1960, listing employee name, amount of payment and various deductions. Most of these records are organized by pay period, and thereafter by department and thereafter alphabetically by the worker’s name. There is also a volume of Payroll and Check Ledgers for 1950-1951 which includes employee name, number of hours worked, gross and net pay, deductions, and taxes.