Fondly, Pennsylvania
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Fondly, Pennsylvania
Fondly, Pennsylvania is HSP's main blog. Here you will find posts on our latest projects and newest discoveries, as well articles on interesting bits of local history reflected in our collection. Whether you are doing research or just curious to know more about the behind-the-scenes work that goes on at HSP, please read, explore, and join the conversation!
This week, I am working on finishing up the John Rutter Brooke Papers, the first collection I am processing as part of the Digital Center for Americana.
". . .chiefly North American, and drawn from life; designed to preserve the characteristics features, personally, mentally, or officially [of] remarkable persons, and the endeared memory of private friends or public benefactors with professional notices &c. Philadelphia, 1790, 91, & 92." (p. 396)
Last week I began to create a finding aid for the Allen Family Papers. From what I can tell so far, the majority of the collection seems to be Alfred Reginald Allen Sr.’s (1876-1918) correspondences with his father, son, wife, and other family members. Leslie Hunt, a former archivist at HSP, had painstakingly inventoried some of this collection back in 2001.
Anyone who says that people don’t care about history should have been at HSP last Wednesday night (October 14). Over 150 people attended an evening program to celebrate the successful completion of our two-year Chew Family Papers Project. The discussion at this event was lively and at times contentious, centering on how HSP has dealt with the Chew family’s involvement in slavery.
If you go to the section entitled About Us at our website, you’ll see that the Historical Society of Pennsylvania has over 19 million manuscripts and graphic items. HSP was founded in 1824 and as you can imagine, we have been collecting and acquiring materials on a continued basis since.
This week I spent some time working on the Joshua Humphreys papers (Collection 306). Born in Haverford, Pa. in 1751, Humphreys would go on to be the nation’s foremost naval architect in the post-Revolutionary era.
The Chew family? Yep, pretty sure we have their records.
The Hopkinson family? Yeah, we’ve got them too.
The Logan family? Yes, them too, and related families.
The Cadwalader family? We’ve got boxes and boxes…and more boxes!
The Bartram family? Believe it or not, yes!
The Conservation lab has been a hubbub of activity lately with a plethora of projects ranging from the never-ending supply of book repairs and document mending to specialized projects such as the cleaning and repairing of Daguerreotypes.
Monitoring the humidity of Daguerreotypes
This summer, I spent some time going through the Edwin Forrest Home Records to identify items for digitization. This collection documents the Home, its operation, its residents, and its dissolution.
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