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Title: Civil War Manuscripts, 1854-1868 (inclusive)
Description: The collection holds disparate letters and documents pertaining to both military and naval officials, and civilians, active during the Civil War. There are small groups of material relating to the careers of five Union men who functioned at various levels in the war: an army colonel, William Watts Hart Davis; a navy surgeon, James McClelland; a soldier from Philadelphia, J. Ridgway Moore; an army general, Lovell Harrison Rousseau; and a Union spy, Richard Wilcox. There are also ten prisoner-of-war letters written by Confederate soldiers being held in Indianapolis, IN, and Columbus, OH. Much of the material was removed from military office files during the war and sent to the collector, John A. McAllister in Philadelphia., Additional Civil War-related autographs, clipped from letters and documents, are in the McAllister Autograph Collection (McA MSS 022)., On deposit at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107. For service, please contact the Historical Society at 215-732-6200 or http://www.hsp.org., Some of the items in this collection were previously assigned accession numbers 5786.F, 5787.F, and 5795.F., John A. McAllister was an antiquarian collector living in Philadelphia.
Creator: McAllister, John A. (John Allister), 1822-1896, collector
Date: 1854
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | MSS McA MSS 024, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A64502#page/1/mode/1up

Title: John Smith Papers, 1802-1819
Description: The collection contains correspondence and documents covering the government and military careers of John Smith; they primarily related to his career as the United States marshal for the district of Pennsylvania during the War of 1812., John Smith was appointed United States Marshal for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by Thomas Jefferson on March 28, 1801, replacing John Hall. He was reappointed by James Monroe on November 27, 1818, for a four-year term, but in January 1819 he was removed from office and replaced by Samuel D. Ingram. Smith was listed in the Philadelphia city directories as “late marshal” from 1819 to 1822, and was not listed thereafter. He married Elizabeth Turner on October 15, 1795, at St Michael and Zion Lutheran Church, Philadelphia. No date of death is known. Smith also had a long military career, serving almost continuously from 1776 until 1814, when the 1st Regiment of the Pennsylvania Cavalry, which he commanded, was disbanded., United States Marshals were public servants appointed by the President; their primary function was to provide local support for the operation of federal courts. The post involved a wide range of duties including procuring witnesses, serving subpoenas and warrants, and paying the fees and expenses of court clerks, judges, federal attorneys, and jurors. Marshals advertised seized property and oversaw its sale. In addition, until 1870, marshals conducted the federal census, and collected a variety of statistical information on behalf of the federal government., In time of war, such as the War of 1812, the marshal's duties expanded to include keeping track of enemy aliens living in the U.S., issuing passports for their domestic travel, and guarding and providing for British prisoners of war.
Creator: Smith, John, marshal
Date: 1793
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | MSS McA MSS 026

Title: Dillwyn and Emlen family correspondence
Description: 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.
Creator: Dillwyn, William, 1743-1824
Date: 1770

Title: Pierre Eugène du Simitière collection
Description: 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.
Creator: Du Simitière, Pierre Eugène, ca. 1736-1784
Date: 1492

Title: Read family papers
Description: This collection contains the papers of four generations of the Read family of Philadelphia, consisting of John Read, Judge John Meredith Read, General John Meredith Read, and Harmon Pumpelly Read. The materials date from 1736 to 1896, with the bulk dating from 1792 to 1896, and include extensive correspondence, bills and receipts, genealogical notes, legal documents, newspaper clippings, photographs, scrapbooks and ephemera. The majority of the collection consists of General John Meredith Read's papers relating to his family history and genealogy, correspondence, and political materials. The collection is particularly valuable in illustrating Philadelphia social life, global and local politics, as well as Civil War experiences, as it includes extensive correspondence describing first-hand accounts of war activities as well as with several key political figures during the Civil War era.
Creator: Read, John Meredith, 1797-1874

Title: Samuel George Morton papers
Description: This collection contains the papers of Samuel George Morton of Philadelphia, a physician, ethnologist, and professor of anatomy at Pennsylvania Medical College. The papers date from 1832 to 1851, when Morton devoted his research efforts almost exclusively to ethnology and to the collecting of human skulls for comparative studies. The bulk of the papers consist of incoming correspondence, relating to ethnology and other related interests such as anthropology, craniology, paleontology and Egyptology. His collecting efforts in the field of crania resulted in extensive correspondence on the subject, which is also included here. The collection is particularly valuable in illustrating the publication process of Morton's technical publications, as it includes extensive notes, annotations, sketches, research and reviews of his published work. There is also a small grouping of documents related to Morton's son, James St. Clair Morton. The collection is arranged into six series: “Correspondence,” “Notes,” “Pennsylvania Medical College,” “Writings,” and “James St. Clair Morton.”
Creator: Morton, Samuel George, 1799-1851
Date: 1832

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