Financial records include checks and checkbooks, account statements, both ingoing and outgoing invoices and receipts, and ledgers detailing both monetary and temporal expenses. Plans for a handful of projects are also present in the collection.
The collection may also contain some personal finance records of the Moon family.
All researchers seeking to publish materials from the collections of the PSNC Archives and Special Collections are requested to contact the archivist, prior to reproducing, quoting, or otherwise publishing any portion or extract from this collection. Although the Preservation Society has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim copyright ownership. It is up to the researcher to determine the owners of the copyright and to obtain any necessary permission from them.
The collection has not been digitized. Please contact Archives and Special Collections if you need to arrange physical access to these materials.
Description or title of item, PSNCA.H.055: Thomas Moon and Sons Business Records, Box #, Folder #, Preservation Society of Newport County, Newport, RI.
Before processing, the collection materials were housed loose in a flat box with virtually no organization. Materials have been arranged by document type, then chronologically. Account statements that were found together in envelopes have been retained together in most instances.
Thomas Moon (ca. 1851-1920) was a carpenter operating Thomas Moon and Sons from his home at 107 Second Street in Newport. He and his wife Mary (née Fadden, ca. 1851-1937) had four children: Thomas Jr. (ca. 1894-1974), Eva P. (1892-1983), Florence (1888-1936), and Charles (1886-1948). Thomas was born in England, immigrating to the United States in 1880, and Mary was born in Ireland, immigrating in 1889.
Over time, the name of the business changed to reflect the involvement of Thomas Moon's sons Charles and then Thomas; earlier records are in Thomas Sr.'s name, and then the business became "Thomas Moon & Son," later "Thomas Moon & Sons." Charles Moon's name appears increasingly on business records and plans in the 1910s. Thomas Sr. died on August 20, 1920. The business is last mentioned in the Newport Directory in 1927. Ten years later, the 1937 directory listed both Thomas Jr. and Charles as being carpenters, but does not have a listing for the business.
Thomas M. Moon, Jr. married Anna Shea (1897-1964) and they had three children: Thomas Michael III (1930-1998), Alfred Charles (1932-1999), and Florence Louise (1933-2003). Thomas served in the U.S. Army and in the Korean War. Alfred graduated from Tufts Medical School in 1957 and became a radiologist. Florence was a Registered Nurse and continued to live at the 107 Second Street property; she donated the collection of papers to The Preservation Society of Newport County in 2002.
Archivist Genna Duplisea processed the collection and wrote the finding aid on
Pages that are particularly brittle, broken, or prone to smudging have been encased in polypropylene sleeves.
Note: The check number sequence indicates that the check in this folder marked 1903 was actually from 1904.