The Browning Arms Company Collection is a collection of documents, ledgers, photographs and artifacts donated by Judith Jones, the daughter of Val Browning who is the son of John M. Browning. There is no original order to the collection other than how papers were attached within folders. The collection has been placed in chronologic order as much as possible to maintain the original order of each file.

There are eight series of the collection which are broken up between business and personal. The first six series deal with the business, the last two deal with Val Browning and his wife, Ann Browning. The collection begins with correspondence, which is broken up into six subseries. Each section has correspondence relating to family members interspersed with business dealings.

The second series is financial, which is broken up into nine subseries. The subseries contains information about the financial part of the different Browning gun businesses. There is information regarding the different companies Browning used to make their guns, including Fabrique National (FN) in Belgium. The final subseries, Taxes is closed to the public.

The third series is Legal, which is broken up into eight subseries. This series contains agreements made between different companies including Colt, Winchester and FN. There are patents, information on court cases, trademarks and tariffs. This series also contains some blueprints that have been itemized in the register.

Fourth is Publications which has information pertaining to the book “American Gunmaker: The John M. Browning Story,” newsletters, catalogues and newspaper clippings. It has been organized chronologically as much as possible.

The fifth series is Other Companies, and it deals with other companies the business dealt in, or the brothers had a hand in. This could mean they were on the board of the company or held stocks in the company.

The sixth series is Awards, Ephemera, Photographs and Miscellaneous. This contains some of the different awards, photographs both business and family related and ephemera. There are negatives within this section which have been removed and placed in cold storage. They are available digitally and the digital reference for these are as follows; CSIC_PK_0009 to CSIC_PK_0017 and CSIC_SR_167-CSIC_SR_254. There is also the original patriarchal blessing of John Browning dated 1856.

The seventh series is the Ann Browning Estate, which pertains to her estate after her death in 1975 and finally, the Val Browning series. This contains information about his philanthropy, personal business dealings, and correspondence. For more information about Val see MS545.