The Traverse City Refrigerator Company's records are divided into two series: General Office Files and Minutes and Reports. The collection documents the company's administrative and business activities from 1909 to 1919.
The Traverse City Refrigerator Company was incorporated in August 1909 with capital stock sold at $100,000; that year, 700 shares sold at $100 each. By 1918, the company declared itself "hopelessly insolvent" and ceased business. On June 25, 1919, the stockholders formally dissolved the Traverse City Refrigerator Company and placed it in voluntary trusteeship in order to sell its assets to pay creditors.
For a decade, the Traverse City Refrigerator Company manufactured the fireless "Wonder Cooker and Baker" and a line of wood-encased, non-electric household and specialty refrigerators (i.e. iceboxes). These appliances were manufactured under the patents of their inventor, Forrest V. Detwiler of Chicago. Detwiler also served as the company's principle salesman and product demonstrator.
According to the firm's prospectus, the "Detwiler System" was an innovation employing "a cold water radiator (or 'circulator') in the lining of the refrigerator." The cooling medium was the water dripping from melting ice then passed through the circulator, which, according to the Traverse City Refrigerator Company, delivered "an absolutely dry cold to the food chamber."
The enterprise was largely the creation of R. Floyd Clinch, who served as the company's vice-president and was a pioneer in the initial development of the Traverse City area. Clinch was the son-in-law of A. Tracey Lay, co-founder of the Hannah and Lay Lumber Co. In 1889, Clinch joined with the Chicago industrialist and noted benefactor John Crerar to form Crerar, Clinch and Co., which became a major Midwestern distributor of industrial coal and coke. By 1906, Clinch maintained control of many Hannah and Lay enterprises in Traverse City and held directorships at many of Chicago's leading railroad corporations, financial institutions, and its Auditorium Building and Hotel.
The Traverse City Refrigerator Company's business papers were maintained in the office files of its president, Milton S. Sanders, who also served as an officer of the Hannah and Lay Mercantile Co. of Traverse City.
