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The Courier-Citizen Company was and is an American success story. The company was the nation’s third-largest book manufacturer, producing over 175 million books in 2014. It was sold to RR Donnelley in 2015, for $261 million.
In 1894, the Lowell Courier and the Lowell Daily Citizen/Citizen Newspaper company merged into the Courier-Citizen Company. With this action the State of Massachusetts issued its official certification by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, William M. Olin - the copy of which is shown below.
The success of this company can be traced back to its rich history, which is documented through records that the University of Massachusetts has collected through an agreement in May of 2015. A sample of this collection has been selected to represent the history of the corporation whose archives are now housed at the University's O'Leary Library Special Collections and accessible to students, faculty, and community researchers.
Included in the collection are minutes for meetings, from Special Director’s Meetings to Annual Stockholder’s Meetings which were held from 1909 – 1972. There is a substantial body of Treasurer’s and Auditor’s reports and from the beginning of the company to the end, there are the tax records detailing the corporate operations. Also there are hundreds of different certificates of stock in the corporate archives which range from 1909 – 1970 which connect to a list of the names, dates, certificate number, of everyone who owned a share in the company. Finally, the University is archiving corporate portraits, photographs, and employee retirement records. The collection stops at 1972, when the company went public.
