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Faith Charlton is a Project Surveyor for the Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories project. Faith joined HSP as Project Assistant for the Greenfield Digital Project in November 2010, and was previously the Reference and Technical Services Archivist at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center. She holds an MSLIS degree with a concentration in Archival Studies from Drexel University as well as an M.A. in History from Villanova University and a B.A. in History from The College of New Jersey.

This Author's Posts

Remembering Pearl Harbor: the photograph albums of two WWII servicemen

In honor of the 71st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I wanted to highlight two interesting photo albums created by World War II soldiers who were stationed at the Hawaiian naval base at different times during the war.

Norman C. Brauer, Jr. wasn’t stationed at Pearl Harbor during the attack; he was sent to the base afterward, working to salvage ships such as the USS Oklahoma. Brauer's scrapbook documents the success of salvage operations, and some of the Hawaiian-themed festivities the servicemen enjoyed on base.

Archival Adventures in Small Repositories
12/7/12
20th century, photographs, Scrapbooks, World War II
A morbidly useful collection at the Spring-Ford Area Historical Society

It only makes sense, but isn't it somewhat ironic that the owner of a funeral home was buried by his own business?

Archival Adventures in Small Repositories
12/4/12
Genealogy, genealogy
Happy Thanksgiving from the Lansdale Historical Society!

The Lansdale Historical Society, founded in 1972, works to preserve and share collections that document the history of the Borough of Lansdale and the greater North Penn area. Although some of the collections’ materials predate the Borough’s founding in 1872, the majority of collections span the late 19th century to the present. 

Archival Adventures in Small Repositories
11/21/12
Maps and drawings and plans, oh my!

After a delayed start due to the Hurricane Sandy, Celia and I are off and running as we begin Phase II of the Small Repositories project.

Before traveling to the Philadelphia-area hinterlands, our first stop was to a repository that’s very close to home: the Fairmount Park Historic Resource Archives, previously the Fairmount Park Commission Archives, at 16th and Arch Streets.

Archival Adventures in Small Repositories
11/7/12
Centennial Exposition, Fairmount Park, Fairmount Park Commission, Fairmount Park Historic Resource Archives, photographs
Samuel H. Barker: A Key Player in the Bankers Trust Story

As Dana and I have mentioned in previous posts, we're currently conducting research and writing annotations for the people and organizations that are featured in the Bankers Trust Company story. We have recently begun focusing on some of the story's key players. One such pivotal figure is Samuel H.

Fondly, Pennsylvania
9/24/12
20th century, Albert M. Greenfield, Bankers Securities Corporation, Bankers Trust Company, Banking, Business, Depression, Greenfield Digital Project, Samuel H. Barker
Bankers Securities Corporation

Because Dana and I are primarily viewing the history of Bankers Trust Company through the eyes of Albert M. Greenfield- since we’re using his papers- we have come across other story lines relating to Greenfield and his numerous other ventures that continually weave in and out of the story of the bank.

Fondly, Pennsylvania
5/9/12
Albert M. Greenfield, Bankers Trust Company, Greenfield Digital Project
There are how many 20th-century collections at HSP?!?

For the past few weeks, I have been taking some time off from transcribing documents for the Greenfield digital editing project to work on a 20th-century collections guide. (Dana and I are almost done transcribing the 325 documents that we're using to tell the story of Bankers Trust Company! Yay!)

Fondly, Pennsylvania
2/22/12
20th century, 20th century collections, Albert M. Greenfield, Greenfield Digital Project, League of Women Voters of Philadelphia records, Richardson Dilworth, Sumiko Kobayashi papers
Bankers Trust Company becomes entangled in a "publishers' war"

Several years after its failure, Bankers Trust Company became entangled in a ‘publishers' war’ which pitted two of Philadelphia’s most prominent newspapers against each other: The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Record. The larger backdrop for this conflict was the vicious political battle raging in the city as well as the rest of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as Democrats, for the first time in years, began to wrest control of government from the Republican Party.

Fondly, Pennsylvania
11/30/11
20th century, 20th century collections, Albert M. Greenfield, Bankers Trust Company, Business, Depression, Greenfield Digital Project, J. David Stern, Moses L. Annenberg, newspapers, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Record, Politics
Transparency in documentary editing

Postmodernist theory, which emphasizes the inevitable existence of individuals’ subjectivity and bias, has for the most part, become commonplace thinking. Within academe, postmodern critical analysis has affected all disciplines, including the “pure” sciences, which are no longer viewed as completely objective and neutral.

Fondly, Pennsylvania
10/5/11
20th century, Albert M. Greenfield, Business, Depression, digitization, Greenfield Digital Project, history, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, text encoding, Text Encoding Initiative
The Philadelphia Record news clippings morgue

About 90% of materials that will be included in the Greenfield digital project on the Bankers Trust Company of Philadelphia come from the Albert M. Greenfield Papers (collection 1959). The other 10% include items from other collections here at HSP that also provide information about the bank.

Fondly, Pennsylvania
4/12/11
20th century, 20th century collections, Albert M. Greenfield, Bankers Trust Company, Business, Conservation, Depression, digitization, Greenfield Digital Project, news clippings, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia