This collection consists of five disbound volumes of letters written to and from William Dillwyn of London and his daughter Susanna Dillwyn in America from 1770 to 1795; and thereafter until 1818, to and from Susanna and her husband Samuel Emlen, Jr. of Burlington County, New Jersey. Although Susanna lived almost her entire life apart from her father, their letters are frequent and deal primarily with family matters and kin. However, there is frequent comment concerning such topics as yellow fever; abolitionism and slavery; and American and European politics, including the Napoleonic wars and the embargo, as well as their effects upon trade and merchants in Philadelphia and London. Moreover, events such as the Federal Convention of 1787 and topics such as the health of Benjamin Franklin, the popularity of President Washington and the trials of a new republic are addressed throughout the correspondence.
The Library Company of Philadelphia purchased this collection of Pierre Eugene Du Simitière's manuscripts at the auction of Du Simitière's American Museum after his death on March 10, 1785. The books and pamphlets bought at the same auction have been dispersed through the Library Company's collections. Du Simitière gathered or copied these manuscripts during his travels in the West Indies, Boston, New York, and while he lived in Philadelphia, where he was a member of and one of the curators of the American Philosophical Society. After the Library Company of Philadelphia purchased the manuscripts, they were bound together. The Historical Records Survey of the Works Progress Administration described the manuscripts in "Descriptive Catalogue of the Du Simitière Papers in the Library Company of Philadelphia" (1940), from which many of the following series and records descriptions have been abstracted. Since the Historical Records survey, many of the bound volumes have been unbound and foldered by the Library Company of Philadelphia. The unbound volumes in the series descriptions contain folder level description; however, the bound volumes are described only as an overall work. For more detail on the bound volumes, see the "Descriptive Catalogue of the Du Simitière Papers in the Library Company of Philadelphia" (1940). Researchers should be aware that the series titles are drawn from the title of the bound volume. It is important to read the entire scope note for each series, because the volumes often contained additional topics than are listed in the title.
