The records of the Consolidation Coal Company (Consol) are skeletal and incomplete, being limited to corporate records from the company’s record storage facility in Library, Pa. The surviving records are limited primarily to series from the Corporate Secretary’s Office, including minute books and agreement and contract files. Annual reports have been transferred to the Imprints Department. The company’s historical photograph collection covering its operations in the Cumberland Field had been given previously to the Smithsonian Institution. Many early records, including some of the earliest Consol minutes and minutes of most of the Maryland predecessor companies, appear to have been lost in the great Baltimore Fire of 1904.
Because the Pittsburgh Coal Company became the surviving parent and because Library was originally a Pittsburgh Coal Company facility, the records are disproportionally representative of the Pittsburgh Coal Company side of the family tree. The contract files are primarily from the Pittsburgh Coal Company and the Monongahela River Consolidated Coal & Coke Company. Also represented among the minutes are the Fairmont Coal Company group and the Hanna Coal Company group, which were close enough to send records to Library. Conspicuously absent are any records from the Pocahontas Fuel Company group.
