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Research dossier · History & Society

American Water Works

company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ467238
Source-derived summary

American Water Works Company, Inc. is an American public utility company that, through its subsidiaries, provides water and wastewater services in the United States.

Its regulated operations provide water and wastewater services to approximately 1,700 communities in 14 states, serving a population of approximately 14 million. The company has 3.4 million customers which includes residential, commercial, fire service and private fire, industrial, government facilities, and other water and wastewater utilities.

The shares are traded on the NYSE under the ticker AWK.

History

The utility was founded in 1886 as the American Water Works & Guarantee Company. In 1914, American Water Works and Guarantee Company became American Water Works and Electric Company. In 1947 it was reorganized as American Water Works Company, Inc.

Since December 2018, the company has its headquarters in Camden, New Jersey, and has about 6,700 professionals who provide drinking water, wastewater and related services to over 14 million people in 18 U.S. states.

Most of American Water's services are locally managed utility subsidiaries that are regulated by the U.S. state in which each operates. American Water also owns subsidiaries that manage municipal drinking water and wastewater systems under contract and others that supply businesses and residential communities with water management products and services.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “American Water Works” is company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through American, Water and Works, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1886, 1914, 1947, 2018—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1886, 1914, 1947—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, American, Water and Works is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q467238. VIAF identifies the subject as 123294822. The Library of Congress control number is n92030489. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1886, 1914, 1947 and 2018.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “American Water Works”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow American Water Works primary sources, American Water Works archive and American research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “American Water Works”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from American Water Works” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.