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The Long-Awaited Finding Aid
Today is the last day of the Chew processing project, and I am proud to announce that the finding aid is now live and available on the His
Chew Family Papers
7/31/09
Comments: 5
Pennsylvania Lands: A guest post by project intern Dean Williams
Likely obvious to anyone who has read previous entries to this blog, the Chew Family Papers contain a great deal of information about the family’s land holdings. Primarily through the speculative efforts of Benjamin Chew and his son Benjamin Jr., the Chews owned thousands of acres of land throughout Pennsylvania, as well as substantial tracts in Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. Their land acquisition, spread out over the course of nearly a century, created a huge volume of paperwork. Many months of this project were spent sorting through and organizing the land papers.
Chew Family Papers
7/30/09
Pennsylvania and the Civil War: Southern Sympathies

In reality, the 'stereotypical' American Civil War, never existed. Not everyone 'North of the Mason-Dixon Line' were lovers of freedom & equality for African-Americans, neither were all Southernors ardent slave-holding secessionists. Perhaps that is one reason why the Civil War continues to generate such a fascination to both scholars and the lay public, since there were so many 'exceptions to the rule.' Certainly, the state of Pennsylvania was not exempt from this phenomenon.
Hidden Histories
7/27/09
Comments: 2
Coming to a Close
We have been hard at work here in the 4th floor processing room, tidying up our finding aid, working on EAD tagging, labeling boxes, and just generally tying up loose ends. There are just 13 work days left in the project, and we are simply thrilled that we have managed to make this formidable collection much more accessible to researchers.
Chew Family Papers
7/14/09
A UFO in 19th-Century Lancaster County, Pennsylvania?

The subject of UFO's are of course nothing new, but continue to create controversy, debate and investigation, within the scientific community and public-at-large, as to their existence or fallacy. Yet most studies of 'Unidentified Flying Objects' are predominately concerned with sightings from the modern-era, particularly that of the 20th and now 21st centuries.
Hidden Histories
6/29/09
Comments: 1
The Concept of Property
Since the completion of processing last week, I have had the chance to go back through previously processed series to tweak the finding aid description. This has also included the exciting task of numbering each folder, now that we are sure there are no more documents lurking around to be added.
Chew Family Papers
6/17/09
Comments: 2
Milestones
Chew Family Papers
6/11/09
We're on a Roll...
Avid blog followers may remember this post from back in August of 2008... Those oversized maps and documents that we unrolled for the first time so many months ago are finally receiving conservation treatment!
Chew Family Papers
5/28/09
I will explain about the "heavy religious messages"
One of the good things about the latest find of material has been the addition of information about later generations of the Chew family. The boxes we are in the process of adding contain materials related to the children of Samuel Chew (d. 1887). In addition to all of the office files that document the management of the family's estates and property, there are personal letters from Elizabeth B. Chew, Anne S.P. (Chew) Alston, Oswald Chew, Samuel Chew Jr. and others. In one envelope, there were a series of "messages" that looked like correspondence.
Chew Family Papers
5/14/09
"It's funny how things never turn out the way you had them planned..."*
A few weeks ago now, I was feeling pretty good about the progress of the Chew Papers processing project. We had just reported to NEH that we had only 8-10 linear feet to process, and I was finally able to really imagine the project being finished. I was nearly finished with the last large series of papers, and expecting processing to be completed by early May. And then, everything changed. (Okay, so I'm being quite dramatic here, but that is definitely how it felt.)
Chew Family Papers
5/6/09