In 1931, William L. Honnold's secretary, Neil C. Cross, instituted a chronological filing system, which brought together all files created in a single year, the files for each year ordered alphabetically by subject. The system was maintained through both William and Caroline Honnold's lifetime, until the records were transferred to the Claremont Colleges. The files for each year typically include "Accounts paid"; files for bank and investment brokerage accounts; principal business ventures, such as the Calaveras Cement Company, Hazeltine Corporation, Hunt Brothers Packing Company, Mayflower Associates, Pacific Alkali Company, and Pacific American Fisheries; principal business associates, in particular members of the Mudd family and Frank L. Taylor; Caroline's sister, Mrs. Jessie A. Shipman (1861-1942), whose affairs Honnold handled, and her son-in-law, Dr. Egerton Crispin (1877-1963); donations; academic institutions supported by Honnold, in particular the Claremont Colleges, the California Institute of Technology, and Knox College; the Republican party; the Rio Blanco Ranch, the Honnolds' vacation home in Colorado; and the Rev. James Fifield's First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Among the most important files are those eventually labeled "Honnold, William L. and Caroline", which first appear in 1935. These contain notes and memoranda exchanged between Honnold and Cross, on a wide range of personal, business, and financial matters, and provide a guide to the matters that Honnold considered most important at any given time. Of special help in identifying other potential sources for researching Honnold, his colleagues, and friends are the "Christmas greetings and gratuities" files, which give the names and addresses of everyone to whom the Honnold's sent Christmas cards. The information in these files is supplemented by a card file of names, addresses, and telephone numbers compiled between approximately 1935 and 1939. Correspondence with persons and corporations and on subjects that was, in Cross's opinion, insufficient in amount or importance to merit a separate folder is filed in "General Correspondence" folders, one for each letter of the alphabet. In this regard, researchers should bear in mind that even important business ventures or business colleagues may not be represented by a separate folder every year: in years when correspondence concerning these ventures or with these colleagues was light, it may be filed in the appropriate General Correspondence folder. Two features of Cross's filing system should also be noted. First, the "Biographical" files contain biographical accounts not just of Honnold but of others; they also contain copies of Honnold's writings. Second, materials relating to corporations that take their names from individuals are usually filed by the last name of the individual. The most efficient method of access to the files until the early 1940s is the annual card index Cross compiled, which indicates the title of the file in which correspondence for that year on a particular subject or with a particular individual can be found. Although Cross discontinued the index in the early 1940s, by this time Honnold had begun to seriously curtail his activities, so its absence does not significantly impede access to the later materials. The series is largely complete. However, during the course of processing the collection it was determined that certain legal and financial papers covering several years had been removed, possibly by an earlier processor, to a separate box. Since it was impossible to determine with absolute certainty to which year each of these files belonged, these files were not reincorporated into the series, but were retained where they were found, and made part of Subseries 3.4: Financial and legal, where they constitute almost the entirety of the legal and tax records dated after 1930. For other files listed in the annual card indexes but no longer found in the series, see "Items Removed from the Collection" in the general administrative notes to the collection.