Power Library - Pennsylvania's Electronic Library Pennsylvania's Electronic Library PA's
Electronic
Library

Paper on the ‘Life of Col. Samuel Miles’ in his own handwriting covering his life from 1739 – 1802. Colonel Samuel Miles (soldier, business entrepreneur, and more public servant) made his mark in Pennsylvania history serving the province and state and the city of Philadelphia, creating the iron industry in Centre County, PA, and founding the town of Milesburg, PA named for his family. He died in 1805. less

This digitized volume is a copy of John Churchman’s survey work of the Nottingham Lots. The location of the original is unknown. Gilbert Cope, a Chester more County, Pa. historian and genealogist, obtained access to Churchman’s personal papers and copied the volume from 1868 to 1873. John Churchman (1753-1805), a native of East Nottingham Township, Chester County, Pa., was a noted 18th-century surveyor and cartographer. Together with other members of his family, he is credited with compiling this volume recording information about the Nottingham Lots. For many years, Churchman held the official post of surveyor for Chester, Delaware, and parts of Berks and Lancaster Counties, Pa. In addition, he was a self-taught scientist, investigated magnetic phenomena in determining seafaring longitude, and was a member of the Society of Friends. Because Churchman eventually deviated from the Quaker “path of simplicity” and became involved in such assorted business activities as real estate investments and mining, he was dismissed from the Nottingham Monthly Meeting. Churchman’s publications include Variation Chart or Magnetic Atlas and a map of the Delmarva Peninsula (1778), which he dedicated to the American Philosophical Society. Churchman corresponded internationally; visited Copenhagen, Denmark, London, England, and St. Petersburg, Russia; and was elected to membership in the Royal Society of Arts (U.K.) and the Imperial Russian Academy. Churchman died at sea as he sailed home to America, having earlier suffered illness in London. The Nottingham Lots, consisting of 18,000 acres, were originally located in Southeastern Pennsylvania. They were created in 1701 by William Penn, who wanted both lands he could control and a settlement along the border separating Pennsylvania and Catholic-friendly Maryland. Penn's original tract was divided into 37 lots, each approximately 500 acres. It is believed that prospective owners made their selections by drawing lots; hence, the use of that descriptive word. Eventually, property ownership was disputed by Penn and his descendants and by Maryland’s Lord Baltimore and his descendants, chiefly over the location of the southern border of Pennsylvania and the northern border of Maryland. Much of this volume of 306 pages records handwritten text and precisely drawn maps relating to ownership of the Nottingham Lots, including owner’s names, lot locations, surveying data, and information dating from 1681 to 1875. Additionally, there are six other informative sections in the volume: - List of Nottingham Warrants (owners by surname) (pp. 128-149) - Contributors to Lancaster Meeting House (1759) (pp. 218-219) - Newlin Township (deeds, surveys, landowners, etc.) (pp. 242-248) - East Bradford Township (landowners) (pp. 251-254) - 4th Battalion, Chester County (1776) – militia list, etc. (pp. 292-299) - Chester County landowners (pp. 300-306) This volume was once part of the Gilbert Cope Historical and Genealogical Collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. In November 1952, it was deaccessioned and transferred to the Chester County History Center. Evidence suggests that prior to 1921, the volume was in the possession of two West Chester residents, William B. McCullough and Slater Russell. In addition to Churchman’s surveys, the digitized material includes a 16 page index of landowner names and locations mentioned in the surveys. Related records on the Nottingham Lots can be found at the Chester County Archives. less

The digitized diaries of Walter Finney consist of three volumes with accompanying typed transcripts and date from 1778 to 1786. The diaries document Walter Finney’s observations more and notes during his service in the Revolutionary War, and as a witness to negotiations with Native American tribes after the War. A typed transcription of each diary, which adheres to Finney’s grammar and spelling, has been scanned and is included at the end of each volume in the collection. For ease of use, the order of scanned pages from the original diaries follows the same order presented in the typed transcripts. Walter Finney was born in New London, Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1748, the son of William (1701-1751) and Jean Stephenson Finney (1706-1751). Except for his military service during the Revolutionary War and immediately afterward, he resided on and cultivated his family farm in New London. According to Chester County and its People, by Wilmer W. Thomson, Finney was active in pre-Revolutionary War activities, including a meeting at the Chester County courthouse on December 20, 1774 “for the purpose of choosing a committee to carry into execution the association of the Continental Congress.” The following month he was appointed to a provincial convention in Philadelphia that recommended both the making of salt peter, a component of gunpowder, and the insuring of a proper supply. Eventually, Finney himself learned how to make salt peter and taught others how to do so. Walter Finney enlisted in the American revolutionary army as a Lieutenant, then rose to Captain and Major. As his diaries record, he spent his wartime service in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and several southern states. He suffered a head wound and was captured by the British and served his incarceration on a New York prison ship. After the war, Finney joined the State Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal and hereditary organization founded in 1783 to commemorate the Revolutionary War. Following the Revolution, Finney seems to have taken part in treaty negotiations with Native Americans who had sided with the British. Once home in New London, Finney was a ruling elder of his Presbyterian Church, was named a director of the New London Library Company, and pursuant to the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790, Gov. Thomas Mifflin appointed him an associate justice of the Chester County Court on which he served until his death. Finney married Mary O’Hara, and together they had two sons, Walter Jr. and William. Finney died on September 17, 1820 and is buried at Thunder Hill Cemetery, also known as the Finney Family Burial Ground, in New London. Joseph Lee Boyle, a military historian who worked at Valley Forge Historical Park for more than a dozen years, transcribed the first two volumes of Finney’s diaries and published them with commentary in New Jersey History, vol. 121, nos. 1-4, 2003, pp. 23-81 and South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 98, no. 2, 1997, pp. 126-152. less

This collection provides access to two rare dispensatories and receptures that illuminate the therapeutic practices and medical orientation of two dispensing physicians in the multilingual colonial more medical market of rural Pennsylvania. The overall objective is the preserve in their entirety and to make accessible to scholarly and lay audiences a body of writings that offer insight into some of the medical resources available to the North American colonial population: A bilingual (German and English) formulary, the Medicina Pennsylvania of George de Benneville, a French Huguenot physician and the record of the practice and of the receptures - entitled Remediorum Specimina aliquot ex praxi A. W[agner] - of a Schwenckfelder practitioner from Silesia. These manuscripts can be dated roughly to the period 1740 to 1780. Both drew on numerous 18th century continental European and English sources, explicitly in the case of the Wagner manuscript and unacknowledged but obvious in the Medicina Pennsylvania. Both offer copious highly technical receptures for the armentarium of chemiatric and botanical substances that were in general use at the end of the early modern period. Similar to other physician manuals of the period, they lay out medicinals and related procedures for treatment of major diseases and conditions, including female complaints and pre- and perinatal advise. A strong but eclectic orientation to chemiatric preparations is evident, matched by reliance on the traditional botanical and animal reservoir. less

Johann Heinrich Keppele was born in 1716 in the village of Treschklingen, in what is today's German state of Baden-Württemberg. In 1738, at the age of more 22, Keppele emigrated to America, arriving in Philadelphia, where he settled, and after beginning as an innkeeper, became a prosperous merchant and importer. In 1741 he married Anna Catharina Barbara Bauer (1725-1774), who was born in the village of Meckesheim, in Baden. They had 15 children, of whom 5 daughters and 4 sons survived into adulthood. Henry Keppele was a successful and well-known butcher, innkeeper, merchant, ship owner, and real estate entrepreneur. Keppele was also a one-term member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and an active member of St. Michael's and Zion Lutheran Church. On 26 December 1764 he was one of the co-founders of the German Society of Pennsylvania, dedicated to helping German immigrants; and he served as its first president, from 1765 to 1781. Keppele died in Philadelphia on June 1, 1797. The Henry Keppele family record book, written in Keppele's own hand, contains biographical information about himself and his family, including a list of his children, with their birth, death, and marriage dates. This is followed by copies of 8 poems in English, in a different hand, copied ca. 1839-1843. The book contains many blank leaves at the back. The Henry Keppele Geburtsregister is approximately 100 pages long. It begins by recording family information similar to what is contained in the Keppele family record book. The remainder and bulk of the book contains prayers and poems written by Keppele. The last entry is from November. 10, 1794, 3 ½ years before his death in June 1797. less

Miscellaneous papers of Lutheran clergyman Henry Melchior Muhlenberg from his later years, including two versions of a memorandum in his hand concerning St. Peter's Lutheran Church more in Barren Hill, Pa. (1774-1783), three letters addressed to him (1782-1786), and a copy of a marriage certificate signed by him (1771). less

Welcome to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania - Indiana Pennsylvania in the Civil War Collection, a part of the POWER Library: PA Photos and Documents. The Indiana more Pennsylvania in the Civil War Era project involves the digitization of primary sources including letters, diaries, and modern and historical photographs that document the experience of men and women of Indiana County, PA during the Civil War era which are now held in the collections of Indiana University of Pennsylvania's Special Collections or the Historical and Genealogical Society of Indiana County. Central to the collection will be the papers of the White family, including a diary kept by Pennsylvania State Senator Harry White, who fought for the North during the Civil War and was imprisoned in Libby Prison and a number of other prisons across the South, the letters of his father Thomas White, a prominent judge who was involved in the organization of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, Richard White, a brother who also served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and letters to them from the Pennsylvania governor and high ranking representatives of the federal government. Also included will be other diaries of Civil War soldiers from the Indiana County area. Together these primary sources will provide a glimpse into the experience of Civil War soldiers and their families at home and political life during the war and hopefully making it easier for researchers to form a better understanding of the Civil War in Indiana County. Currently, access to the original resources is very limited. The HGSIC is open from 9 am to 4pm Tuesday through Friday and Saturday from 10am to 3 pm. and the hours of the Special Collections section of IUP Library are similarly restrictive. This project will make these materials available 24/7 to researchers with access to the lnternet. less

Welcome to the Keystone College Local History Collection, a part of the POWER Library: PA Photos and Documents. This collection a large number of photos and more documents from and about the local communities and personalities present in Factoryville, PA; Nicholson, PA; Dalton, PA; and other smaller communities dating from 1868 to the present. less

Jay Veeder Hare (1878 -1953) was born in Schodack, New York. He attended the Peirce School in Philadelphia and graduated from Temple University Law School. He more began his long career with the Reading Company in 1897 as a junior clerk who rose through the ranks, retiring from the railroad in 1945 as secretary and treasurer of the Reading Company, parent company of the Reading Railway System. He wrote the first in-depth history of the Reading Company. He was an avid gardener and a founder of the Trevose Horticultural Society in Trevose, Pennsylvania, where he lived at Hareacres with his wife Jean (Weber) Hare and daughters Jean and Nancy. He was a member of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s executive council from 1929 to 1949. Mr. Hare gave many illustrated lectures on plants and gardens based on his extensive world travels. He obtained lantern slides from commercial photography houses such as Williams, Brown & Earle and the William H. Rau Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; T.Takagi Photo Company in Kobe, Japan and T. Ikeda in Tokyo, Japan; Lévy et Neurdein Réunis in Paris, France; and Arxiu Mas in Barcelona, Spain. His lectures were supplemented by his own photography. The collection is strong in images from Japan, Italy, Spain, the United States and Switzerland, with representation from Bermuda, England, Ireland, France, Monaco, Germany, New Zealand, and South Africa. The images, many of which are hand-colored, depict typical or famous gardens, well-known city parks, tourist views of areas of spectacular natural beauty such as waterfalls and picturesque coastlines, as well as individual plant portraits. Many of the gardens and much of the landscape have changed significantly in the past 100 years or have disappeared entirely. For example, the views of Japan include chrysanthemum festivals, Japanese gardens, flower arranging for tea ceremonies, tea gardens, farmers picking tea leaves, and men, women and children in traditional Japanese dress – all evoke a time that no longer exists. In addition to an avid interest in gardens and plants, Jay V. Hare was also a birder and member of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club. The lantern slide collection was given to PHS McLean Library & Archives by daughter Nancy Veeder Koltes in 2008.This digital project is supported in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities Sustaining the Humanities Through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) grant. less

The Garden Club of Philadelphia was established in 1904 by Mrs. J. Willis Martin and Miss Ernestine Goodman to promote an interest in gardens, their design, more and management. The garden club held meetings, conducted horticultural research, attended lectures, and participated in civic endeavors. In 1913, several members of the Garden Club of Philadelphia joined with several women from other local gardening associations to form the larger Garden Club of America. This collection, comprised of more than 300 views on glass, most hand-tinted, focuses on individual private gardens in and around Philadelphia, eastern Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The images provide unique documentation of gardens that are either “lost” or have been significantly altered during the last half of the 20th-century and include multiple views of the estate gardens of Andalusia, Stenton, Highlands, and Ludington among many others. This digital project is supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. less

An extensive midwifery manuscript (Hebamme Büchlein) in the archive of the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, penned between the years 1770-1819, is attributed to Rosina Heydrich, more a midwife and member of the Schwenkfelder community in the Upper Perkiomen Valley. This unique manuscript served as both a birth register and a compendium of specific remedies, treatments, and recommendations for women’s health. The largest and most significant portion of the text is devoted to listing the dates and names associated with 1,739 births to which she dutifully attended, detailing the breadth of five decades of service to the community as an experienced lay practitioner of obstetric medicine. less

Items include a report on the 1907 Dar Mine Disaster relief efforts; the Twin Shaft mining disaster investigation, 1986, Early Indian history along the Susquehanna River, more Problem of the Irish in America speech, 1886, American Freeman, 1867. less