J. Craig Huff, Jr. Records

Collection

Identifier: 6703

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Scope and Contents

Collection contains reports of mill visits, 1948-1965, made by Huff as a sales representative for Draper Company, textile machinery manufacturers, Hopedale, Massachusetts. Arranged chronologically, with a list of mills included at beginning of each report. Also includes Draper Company related records from the 1940s to the 1960s, correspondence, a speech given by Huff to the Textile Society of Canada, 1952, "Fixing high speed looms to standard," and notes on machinery and other matters.

Dates

1906-1971 (Bulk 1936-1971)

Creator

Draper Company (Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.

Conditions Governing Use

This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.

Biographical / Historical

Craig J. Huff Jr. was born on August 2, 1920 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following his graduation from Williams College, he became a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and served on an LST in the Mediterranean Theatre in World War II. After the war he took a position at the Draper Corporation, a manufacturer of power looms for the textile industry. Determined to learn the business from the ground up, Huff started off working in the foundry. Eventually he joined the sales department, and in the mid-1960's, he was named President of Draper where he remained in that position until 1972, when the company was taken over by Rockwell International.

After leaving Draper, Huff became president of Fenn Manufacturing and later served as a consultant for Morgan Construction Company, a manufacturer of steel rolling mill equipment. When he left Morgan, he decided that having spent his career working for large global corporations, he wanted to use his business expertise to run a small company. In 1979, he formed a partnership with a small group of investors and bought the Hayes Pump and Machinery Company, a distributor of pumps and related equipment. As the president and CEO of Hayes, he used his talents to increase the company's annual revenues from $3-4 million to $30 million. In addition to his responsibilities at Hayes, Huff also served as a director of Pitney Bowes and the investment firm, The Colonial Fund in Boston, MA. He was one of the founders of the American Textile History Museum formerly in Lowell, MA. In 2007, Huff was honored for the time and resources he had devoted to Williams by receiving the prestigious Joseph's Coat Award. Huff had a passionate interest in American history, beginning with his own family's story of arriving here in 1607 to help establish the first settlement in Jamestown, VA.

Huff died on October 20, 2009 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 89.

Extent

3 cubic feet

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Custodial History

American Textile History Museum Collection, gift of J. Craig Huff.

Processing Information

The ATHM # references the accession number given to collections by the American Textile History Museum (ATHM). These numbers have been kept and tracked for researchers looking for former citations. The ATHM accession numbers for this collection were 0022.359 and 1989.212.1. Records originally titled as Draper Corporation Records, 1989.212.1 by the ATHM were moved here becuase they were Huff's records from his time there.

When the materials had been processed by the ATHM, the records were usually kept in the original order but sometimes the box and folders numbers will change. The old numbers appear in the processing note, the box and folder are the numbers that immediately follow the accession number. For instance, the number 0022.359.1, would indicate that the material was formerly in Box 1.