This collection contains an envelope from the Phillips Packing Company, Incorporated of Cambridge, MD. The postmark date is 1948.

In 1902, Levi B. Phillips and William Grason Winterbottom organized the Phillips Packing Company out of what previously had been the Wallace Oyster Packing Plant. The company prospered, especially under the able direction of Albanus Phillips, who turned a small regional packing operation into a huge vegetable and seafood conglomerate that ultimately gave employment to 10,000 workers in Cambridge and other areas of the state. While the family continued to pack oysters, Albanus Phillips concentrated on canned tomatoes, catsup, and sweet potatoes. Under his direction, the firm became one of the largest food processing businesses in the nation. Phillips food products were so well known that Admiral Richard Byrd made Albanus Phillips the food provisioner for his Arctic expeditions in the 1920s. Byrd and Albanus Phillips became such close friends that the admiral named a mountain range in Antarctica after the intrepid Cambridge tomato king. The Phillips Company had extensive contracts with the military during World War I, and in World War II, the Phillips Company became one of the largest suppliers of "C Rations" to the United States Army. Changing consumer tastes in the 1950s brought an end to the Phillips Packing business. Americans changed from canned foods to frozen foods, and demand for tinned vegetables greatly declined. When the Phillips Company ceased its operations in the 1960s, an era had passed. No more would the big canneries dominate the economic life of Maryland's Eastern Shore.