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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

The digitized reminiscences recorded by John Hill Brinton consist of five volumes (three original and two typed transcripts) and date from 1856 to 1868. Found within more the collection are descriptions of early Chester County people, places, and historical events dating back to the late 1600s. John Hill Brinton (1811-1893) was born in Thornbury, Pennsylvania on June 2, 1811, the son of Thomas Hill and Catharine Odenheimer Brinton. He attended Strode’s Academy, West Chester, Pennsylvania and Germantown Academy in Philadelphia. Brinton then studied law for three years with William H. Dillingham and was admitted to the Chester County bar on October 6, 1832. He practiced law in West Chester, and was the oldest member of the county bar at the time of his death. Active in politics and a self-identified Jacksonian Democrat, Brinton was a compelling speaker. Though he was never elected to office, he was appointed Deputy Attorney General—the equivalent of District Attorney—for Chester County, serving from April 1847 until July 1848. Brinton was also a local historian interested in his family genealogy, as well as early Chester County history. In 1873, he traveled to Europe in part to learn about his family’s origins. Additionally, beginning in the 1840s, he interviewed Chester County residents about their families and recorded their memories about the county’s past. Brinton died, aged 81, unmarried and childless, after a brief illness on February 5, 1893. The collection consists of three handwritten volumes and two volumes of transcriptions that document the history of Chester County, Pennsylvania from the late 1600s to the mid-1800s through the reminiscences of residents interviewed by Brinton. After Brinton’s death, the original manuscript was held by the Ogier family for many years before being returned to the Brinton family at which point handwritten indexes were added. In 1915, Francis D. Brinton underwrote the manuscript’s typed transcription and the two volumes of transcripts were bound by Fahr and Johnson of Philadelphia in 1950. The only typed index is in the first transcribed volume, leaving readers to refer to the original manuscript volumes for handwritten indexes to Book 2 and Book 3. Book 1 is described by Brinton as “Conversations held with old people respecting former times—some of them relatives, some of them friends, some acquaintances—and residing generally in Chester and Delaware Counties and Birmingham and Thornbury Township.” The volume begins with a 23 page index followed by 240 pages of Brinton’s handwritten synopses. These recollections include many members of the Carr, Darlington, Dilworth, Downing, Hickman, Hoopes, Mendenhall, Sharpless, and Taylor families. Brinton notes that these conversations were recorded as soon as they took place, though in cases of multiple conversations with single individuals, manuscript notations were consolidated into a single record. Topics discussed include the Revolutionary War and the Battle of Brandywine, the growth and development of Chester County, the changing appearance of the county’s land and trees, house and road construction, Quaker meetings, family genealogies, local mills, property ownership, politics, legal precedents, and etc. In addition, Brinton family members and the building, renovation, and general appearance of the 1704 Brinton House are discussed at length. Book 2 begins with a 32 page index followed by 231 pages of handwritten recollections, which cover topics similar to those in Book 1. In addition, Brinton records his visit to Europe, which he undertook in part to trace his family’s history and origins. Book 3 begins with a 14 page index followed by 174 pages of notes. The first section, “Notes of Conversations held by me with old inhabitants about the early settlement in Penn’s Colony,” covers events relating to Chester County’s earliest European inhabitants. The second section, “Some account of William Brinton one of the early settlers in Penn’s Colony of Pennsylvania and of His Descendants,” is an essay on the life of William Brinton, who settled in America in the 1600s. 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

Materials by and about Benjamin Franklin from the State Library collection digitized in commemoration of his 300th birthday.

A selection of documents on the battles of Fort Necessity and Braddock's Campaign, along with background on French and English relations as well as their interactions more with the Native American tribes of the northeastern colonies in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Originally digitized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Necessity. less