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Cover for The Sohioan's January 1939 issue, showing an illustration of a baby under a spotlight.

So long, 2025! The clock doesn't strike midnight every day, so we're celebrating this special occasion with a January 1939 issue of The Sohioan, a magazine published by the Standard Oil Company (Ohio) for its subsidiaries' and divisions' current and former employees, as well as dealers, distributors, and stockholders. 

Standard Oil Company (Ohio), or Sohio, was created out of the 1911 antitrust dissolution of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Prior to the dissolution of the Standard Oil Company, the company's Ohio operations controlled up to twenty-one of Cleveland's twenty-six refineries, while the company as a whole controlled up to 90% of the nation's refining capacity and output.

In the aftermath of the disbanding of the company, the newly formed Standard Oil Company (Ohio) became an independent corporation that managed marketing operations and service stations in Ohio, as well as a single refinery in Cleveland, but held no oil reserves or pipelines. The company continued under this model until it was acquired by British Petroleum, a merger than began in 1968 with a 25% controlling interest and was completed in 1987.

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Christmas postcard illustrating Santa Claus driving a car filled with toys.

Whatever you're celebrating (or not celebrating) this week, here's to making it a safe one spent with the ones you love. Drive safe, everyone!

This 1907 postcard from the Robbins Bros. Co. of Boston, Massachusetts is part of Hagley Library's Waldron collection of Christmas and holiday postcards (Accession 2000.223).

This collection of over 500 items was donated to the Hagley Library in 1973 by Maxine Maxson Waldron (1898-1982), an artist and educator once employed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its department of education, by various private schools as an art teacher, and as a ceramics specialist at the Greenwich House Pottery Shop. After her marriage to William R. Waldron, an employee at Du Pont's Chambers Works, she pursued her interests in art, fashion, and interior decoration through her activities as a collector.

You can view digitized images from this collection by visiting its page in our Digital Archive.

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Black and white photograph from inside a Bethlehem Steel factory, showing workers and large industrial shearing equipment.

Here's a photograph from one of the Hagley Digital Archives' newer collections; this image, captured in August of 1921, shows workers operating guillotine shears at the Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company's Coatsville Works.

The photograph was taken by George A. Richardson (1886-1976), who was an engineer with an expertise in metallurgy and a career in technical publicity and sales for major steel manufacturers. He began his career in 1913 in the sales department at the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company, which acquired the Cambria Steel Company in 1916 and was, in turn, acquired by the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1923.

Richardson was also an early amateur photographer who used his work to illustrate his lectures and publications on the steel industry. This collection of photographs and negatives was primarily taken by Richardson while working for Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. 

Join us for the Eighth Annual Hagley 5K/1K run/walk along the Brandywine River through the beautiful grounds of Hagley Museum.

Hagley's 5K along the Brandywine - Registration fee is $30 through March 22, $40 beginning March 23.

Hagley's 1K Family Fun Run - Registration is $20.

Corporate and community teams are encouraged.

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Photograph of a store window displaying DuPont winter car products.

Staying warm today might be off the table, but maybe you can at least stay safe this winter. This December 1978 photograph from Hagley Library's Charles H. DeMirjian collection of DuPont Consumer Products Division photographs and ephemera (Accession 1995.273) features a store display window showcasing DuPont's line of winter care car products.

The collection was assembled by Charles H. DeMirjian (1925-) during his years as a packaging design manager with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. He was primarily a manager of designers, and supervised an integrated approach that combined marketing research, advertising and package design.

DeMirjian collected pictures, advertisements, and publications showing DuPont consumer products, as well as some of the products and packages themselves, usually for presentation to dealers and retailers to demonstrate how packaging and merchandise display techniques could efficiently promote the products.

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