Francis Bannerman Sons Archive

<jats:p> The late-nineteenth-century theatre and other forms of popular performance are linked to first decades of the American motion picture industry through their mutual commercial supplier: Francis Bannerman Sons. The Bannerman family, founding the nation's first military surplus store, from the 1870s through the 1930s supplied weaponry from small arms to cannons, blank ammunition, costumes, uniforms, saddlery, and miscellaneous accoutrements to theatre companies, wild west shows, and vaudevillians, later supplying similar items to recently-formed motion picture studios. The Bannerman archive is a major, but untouched, source for studying American entertainments through this span of time. </jats:p>