Craddock-Terry records may help researchers

About 120 years ago, a Lynchburg man sent a letter to retailers in the shoe business to tell them about a new company called Craddock, Terry Shoes.

“I will call on you in a short time with a large and complete line of our own goods, and have only one thing to ask of you,” wrote Samuel McLaughlin. “That is not to place any orders for Boots & Shoes, either for the present or future use, until you see what I have to offer.”

That letter went out in late May 1888. On June 1, McLaughlin and four other local investors started the Craddock-Terry Shoe Company with $50,000 in capital.

The company grew to become one of the largest shoe manufacturers in the South. It was the largest employer in Lynchburg for years before it hit hard financial times, was sold, and went bankrupt in the late ’80s.

For decades, thousands of pages detailing the company’s history collected dust in the basements of dilapidated buildings in downtown Lynchburg.

But as downtown turned a page of history and renovation efforts began, people started running across those documents — inventory, employment and sales records, letters and catalogs that tell the story of a company, its city and its people.

“It’s not just a collection of business records, but it’s also an opportunity to interpret those records,” said Lee Shepard, director of manuscripts and archives for the Virginia Historical Society.

“Business history is more than the history of business.”

The society is giving the Craddock-Terry records a safer and more permanent home in its Reynolds Business History Center in Richmond.

Douglas Harvey said that when he became director of the Lynchburg Museum in 2005, he started hearing “that there were Craddock-Terry records scattered all around Lynchburg.”

That same year, Oliver Kuttner’s development company M&O Corporation bought a former Craddock-Terry office building on 9th Street.

“Like many of the old buildings in Lynchburg, it was full of old things that were deemed junk,” said Kuttner, who has worked on revitalizing a number of historic Lynchburg buildings.

“We were going to throw it away, until we realized there was some stuff that was not as bad.”

The building “has this old basement. It was full of these old crates of records,” Kuttner said.

At the time, Kuttner was in talks with the museum system about turning the building, across from Amazement Square, into a museum to house collections that are currently in storage.

He told Harvey about the papers in the 56 9th Street basement. Harvey “knew the difference between something that was worth having and something that was not,” Kuttner said.

Meanwhile, piles upon piles of Craddock-Terry records sat in the Jones Memorial Library.

Years ago, someone salvaged 60 cubic feet of papers from a former Craddock-Terry warehouse that is now Riverviews. They dropped the records at the Jones Memorial Library.

Harvey said that neither the library nor the museum had the space or staff necessary to archive the papers.

He considered sending them to the Virginia Historical Society, but first he had to find out to whom the papers legally belonged.

Was there a successor company to Craddock-Terry that would have a right to them?

He called Eloise Peters, the widow of one of the company’s vice-presidents, for information.

She told him that she had papers, too. They had been in the basement since at least 1987 when her husband retired. He died in 2007.

“I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was in the records, I just realized that they might be worth something to somebody,” she said.

When Harvey learned that no successor to the Craddock-Terry Company had a claim to the records, Riverviews and Kuttner’s company donated the records found in their buildings.

The Virginia Historical Society collected the documents and put them in acid-free containers. Now they’re looking for funding to help finish and index it, Shepard said.

He said the Craddock-Terry collection reveals trends in the marketplace and in culture.

Researchers could also use it to understand business cycles, what made Craddock-Terry successful and what led to its downfall.

Harvey said it’s important to preserve the history of a company that played a major role in Lynchburg’s growth.

“Craddock-Terry is part of the rebirth of Lynchburg, and the life of Lynchburg from the late 19th century to modern times,” he said. “Essentially, it fed and housed thousands of people in Central Virginia and other parts of Virginia.”

Some points of history on the Craddock Terry Company, from advertisements and other records in the Craddock-Terry Collection.

- John W. Craddock, A.P. Craddock, T.M. Terry started the company in 1888. Max Guggenheimer, a local investor, helped finance it. Samuel McLaughlin was a partner, but died that summer.

- The company was at first a wholesaler of footwear. It had $311,465 in sales in 1889, and $1 million in sales 10 years later.

- Craddock-Terry began making shoes at the turn of the century. It built a number of factories and warehouses in Southside Virginia and in the St. Louis area and Milwaukee, Wis.

- The company hit hard times during the Great Depression and got rid of the plants outside Virginia.

- During the Depression, Craddock-Terry continued annual picnics for all employees and their families. The picnics included sports contests and beauty pageants.

- Business picked up again during World War II, when Craddock-Terry made boots for soldiers.

- Sales peaked in 1978. But during the 1980s foreign competition was credited for declining sales. The company was sold, and filed for bankruptcy in the late 1980s.