The Koonce Furniture Company was founded by two brothers, John S. Koonce and Charles F., although the latter opted out of the furniture business in 1915. The surviving records of the store range in date from 1905 to 1935. However, John Koonce held the business together though the economic depression, until his sudden death at the beginning of 1940.This collection contains the surviving correspondence, invoices, furniture manufacturers' catalogs and two sales volumes of the Koonce Furniture Company, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Includes correspondence, invoices, and furniture manufacturers' catalogs; and 2 volumes, (one of them disbound and incomplete).
The Koonce Furniture Company was founded by two brothers, John S. Koonce and Charles F., although the latter opted out of the furniture business in 1915. The surviving records of the store range in date from 1905 to 1935. However, John Koonce held the business together though the economic depression, until his sudden death at the beginning of 1940.
This collection contains the surviving correspondence, invoices, furniture manufacturers' catalogs and two sales volumes of the Koonce Furniture Company, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Surviving correspondence has been arranged chronologically. Where the number of surviving invoices has been sufficiently large as to make it worthwhile, they have been sorted by category year by year. The categorized Koonce Furniture Company Papers invoices will be found to be gathered, for the most part, by the name of the company from whom Koonce made his purchases, and not arranged chronologically.
John S. Koonce (1881-1940), son of John F. and Barbara Koonce, was a native of Onslow County. His widowed mother moved with her daughter and two sons to Raleigh in the mid-1890's following the death of her husband. She and her daughter worked as seamstresses while her son Charles F. took work as a printer, and her son John S. was employed as a clerk in the furniture store of Thomas and Maxwell. By 1905 the two brothers opened their own furniture store, Koonce Brothers, at 111 E. Hargett Street. When the two of them opened Koonce Brothers Hotel at 203 S. Salisbury Street in 1915, Charles opted out of the furniture business to run the hotel and to edit the labor oriented weekly newspaper, The Union Herald. From that time until his death 25 years later John S. Koonce was sole proprietor of the furniture store. Offering basic household furnishings and stoves, the store prospered. By 1923 Koonce had opened a second, smaller store in Zebulon, and in 1925 he built a new three-story brick building for his store at 111-113 E. Hargett Street. By the close of 1929, however, his customers began to feel financially pinched, and as the economic depression worsened in the 1930s, Koonce felt the pinch, too. By 1933 many furniture manufacturers and suppliers began to refuse him credit or to extend only a limited credit to him. Those who did found it necessary in 1934 to dun Koonce in order to extract payment from him. The surviving records of, the store end with the year 1935, though Koonce continued to hold his business together right up to his sudden death at the beginning of 1940.
[Identification of item], PC.1916, Koonce Furniture Company Papers (Raleigh, N.C.), 1905-1935, State Archives of North Carolina, North Carolina Division of Historical Resources, Raleigh, NC, USA.
Gift, Mrs. Albert L. Levine, Raleigh, N.C., 2000 and 2001.
The surviving records of Koonce Furniture Company are very incomplete. For some years there is a fairly comprehensive body of invoices for his purchases from manufacturers and suppliers; for other years there are none. For some years there is a body of correspondence; for other years none. The collection of papers includes a few miscellaneous records relating to the store, the invoices for materials used in erecting the new store building in 1925, and a small collection of catalogs and price lists issued by furniture manufacturers in North Carolina and other states between 1924 and 1934. Most of them are undated. The only surviving financial records of the store are two sales books. Of these the first was much damaged and is incomplete. It covers the period from July 16, 1925, to Feb. 17, 1926. The second volume is complete and represents sales from Dec. 1, 1927, to Nov. 9, 1928.
Blue Ridge Hickory Furniture Co., High Point, N.C.
Carolina Bedding Co., Charlotte, N.C.
Cranford Chair Co., Asheboro, N.C.
Durham Mattress Co., Durham, N.C.
Glascock Stove Manufacturing Co., Greensboro, N.C.
Hanes Chair and Table Co., Mocksville, N.C.
Home Chair Co., Inc., North Wilkesboro, N.C.
Hoover Chair Co., Lexington, N.C.
Mebane Bedding Co., Mebane, N.C.
Mebane Chair Co., Mebane, N.C.
Statesville Furniture Co., Statesville, N.C.