Scope and Contents:
Dubbed "the premiere pork baron" by one biographer, Philip D. Armour owned numerous successful slaughterhouses throughout the United States during the late nineteenth century.
Correspondence from Armour (all but three letters in the collection) includes business letters to Frank F. Miles, a business associate at the Omaha plant, personal letters to his family and friends, and letters detailing the plans for a packing plant in Seattle, to cash in on the Klondike business.
The Illinois Historical Survey acquired these photocopies in 1965 from E. G. Schafer, Washington State University. Schafer, the son-in-law of Miles, donated the originals to the Illinois Institute of Technology.