Furman Hovey Martin Jr. Papers
Collection
Identifier: Mss-0294
The Furman Hovey Martin Papers are arranged by type of material: American Cotton Handbook chapter; articles; biographical information; Clemson textbooks; conference, trips and visits; correspondence; memoranda; newspapers and newspaper clippings; patents; photographs; publications; reports; and weekly summaries. The collection also contains charts, cloth samples, index cards and tables. Martin prepared extensive correspondence, memoranda and reports for Springs Industries concerning a wide variety of processes, machinery and raw material used in the textile industry, 1940s-1970s. The papers document the research and development department of a major, progressive textile corporation.
The papers date from 1860-1999 with the bulk of the collection 1949-1971.
Correspondence, drafts and corporate publications were used by Martin when he wrote chapter seven, "Opening and Picking Cotton" of The American Cotton Handbook, 1952-1963. Martin also wrote a number of articles for professional publications which are in one folder and date from 1936-1940. The biographical information includes some report cards from Parker High School in Greenville County, 1926-1929, correspondence, and a sketch of the Clemson Aero Club plane, circa 1930s. There are three soft-cover Clemson textbooks that Martin annotated: A.S.T.M. Manual on Presentation of Data, Cotton Classing Manual, and Cotton Opening and Picking. The conference materials include programs, proceedings, and registration information from meetings of the American Society of Quality Control, 1952-1955, the Cotton Clinic, 1948-1970, and the Textile Quality Control Association, 1951-1973. Correspondence concerns various aspects of Martin's research work at Springs as well as his professional activities. There is a small box of index cards of citations to articles about textile manufacturing for the period 1930-1945.
The bulk of the papers are memoranda and project reports from 1945-1972 regarding research undertaken by the Springs Industries Research and Quality Control Department. The newspapers, newspaper clippings and publications were published primarily by Springs Industries during the period 1936-1999. The patents, 1860-1967, include some filed by Springs Industries related to textile manufacturing machinery and manufacturing processes. Photographs include a few of Martin as well as some related to Springs Industries employee events, plant machinery as well as four folders of photographs documenting an extended business trip to France and possibly Belgium circa 1958. The reports concern discussions with experts, professional meetings, and plant visits. Weekly summaries of quality control data from 1952 and process control data 1969-1970 document quality control testing and their results.
Furman Hovey "Skeebo" Martin Jr. was born January 10, 1910 in Pelzer, South Carolina the son of Furman Hovey Martin and Marie Eloise Sadler Martin. Educated in local schools and Parker High School in Greenville, he received a BS in Textile Engineering from Clemson College in 1933. That year, he began working for Springs Industries where he continued working until his retirement in 1975. During this period Martin became the Director of the Springs Industries Research and Quality Control Department. During the Second World War he served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines and retired from the Army Reserves with the rank of major. He married Annie Rodgers Martin and they had two sons, Furman H. Martin III and Oscar R. Martin and one daughter, Eloise Martin Barnes. Martin died in Lancaster SC on April 19, 2002 and is buried in the columbarium at Arlington National Cemetery.
14.5 Cubic Feet (31 document boxes, one box of index cards, one box of photographs and three oversize folders)
English
After receiving a degree in textile engineering from Clemson College in 1933, Furman Martin worked at Springs Industries in research and development, 1933-1975 with service in the U.S. Army during World War II. The papers primarily pertain to Martin's work at Springs Industries and document applied research related to textile manufacturing. They include articles, artifacts, correspondence, drawings, index cards, memoranda, newspapers, patents, photographs, reports, and tables.
Eloise Martin Barnes and Oscar Rodgers Martin as accession 03-150.
Carl Redd began work on the papers with the help of student assistant, Kim Brewer in 2003. Student assistants Emily Estes and Michael Peay completed the processing 2006-2007. The finding aid prepared by Michael Kohl in 2007.
The conversion of this finding aid to Encoded Archival Description format was made possible with a grant from the South Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board in 2009-2010. The finding aid was prepared for encoding by Kristi Roberts.
Part of the Clemson University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Repository