Lyon, Clement & Greenleaf Company (Wauseon, Ohio) records

The great majority of the records of The Lyon, Clement & Greenleaf Company is comprised of incoming correspondence from related businesses which were located throughout the northwestern and midwestern United States. The correspondence takes the form of orders, receipts, sales records, market situations, product requests, freight lists, insurance claims, and general comments on goods shipped and received. In essence, the correspondence provides a fine profile of daily exchanges in this particular vein of business and on the supply and demand nature of the market.

The financial ledgers--cash books, inventory lists, transcribed sales and accounts--are really the only records we have of the company itself, since no outgoing correspondence was copied and/or retained. It is interesting to note how the financial records begin with the Hunt & Company records and continue thereafter with the genesis and changes in the Lyon, Clement & Greenleaf firm.

The financial ledgers simply have been arranged by year, depending upon the nature of the information included. The correspondence has been arranged according to year and alphabetically according to company name. Thus the researcher is provided with an efficient means of tracing a given company's particular dealings with the Lyon, Clement & Greenleaf firm over an extended time. The possibilities for studying local business history are by far the best, since most of the correspondence is from various local businesses. In addition, the correspondence can be cross-referenced in the financial ledgers.