The history of the Chew family in America goes back to 1622, when John Chew arrived in Jamestown, Virginia aboard the Charitie. Dr. Samuel Chew (1693-1744), three generations removed from John, was born and lived in Maryland much of his life, residing at the family estate of Maidstone in Herring Bay, Maryland; and afterward at Whitehall, in Duck Creek, Delaware. He and his family also lived in Dover and the Lower Counties (now Delaware), as well as in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Chew received training in law and medicine, eventually acting as a doctor in Kent County, Delaware, and later as the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Lower Counties. In 1715, he married Mary Galloway (1697-1734) and after her death, he married Mary Paca Galloway (d. 1746), the widow of his brother-in-law. The two marriages resulted in five children who lived to adulthood: Elizabeth; Ann; Benjamin; Samuel, who lived in Chestertown, Maryland, administering the family’s farms and plantations; and John, who also lived in Chestertown, working as a merchant. Both of these men kept up with the Philadelphia branch of the family through frequent correspondence and occasional visits.
Dr. Samuel Chew is perhaps best known for his challenge of the Quaker meeting in Duck Creek. Refusing to accept the meeting’s criticism of his daughter’s 1740 marriage to a non-Quaker, and their censure of his grand jury charge encouraging the taking up of arms as a means of defense, Chew was eventually expelled in 1742. In response, he authored an advertisement sent to the Pennsylvania Gazette but never published, in which he admonished the Quakers for denying him the same liberty of conscience that they clamored for. As a result of this rift with the Duck Creek Meeting, Samuel Chew and his descendents broke from the Quaker faith, joining the Anglican and, later, the Episcopal Church.
Chief Justice Benjamin Chew (1722-1810) was the only surviving son of Dr. Samuel Chew and his first wife, Mary Galloway. Born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, he would eventually serve as recorder of Philadelphia, attorney general, recorder-general, and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania under the colonial government. After the Revolution, he was selected as the president of the High Court of Errors and Appeals. His 1747 marriage to Mary Galloway (1729-1755), produced four surviving children: Mary, Anna Maria, Elizabeth, and Sarah. His second marriage, in 1757, to Elizabeth Oswald (1734-1819), brought forth eight more children: Benjamin Jr., Margaret (Peggy), Juliana, Henrietta, Sophia, Maria, Harriet, and Catherine (Kitty). Chew’s children increased the social status of the family through marriages to members of the Banning, Carroll, Galloway, Howard, Nicklin, Phillips, Tilghman and Wilcocks families.
Tutored in the classics during his early years by Francis Alison, the elder Benjamin began his law studies at the age of fifteen, under the guidance of Andrew Hamilton, and concluded his formal education in 1744 at Middle Temple in London. Returning home upon the death of his father, he moved to Delaware, where he quickly became enmeshed in the political and legal affairs of Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties. His first appointment was as a representative to the Lower Counties’ Assembly. Soon thereafter, he was chosen to act as a representative of the Penn family, assigned as secretary to the commission charged with settling the long-standing border dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland. Thus Chew became intimately involved in legal proceedings that eventually resulted in Mason and Dixon’s survey of the boundary line. In addition, Benjamin Chew represented the colonial government in negotiating Indian treaties at Easton. In the mid-1750s, he was granted the post of attorney general for both Pennsylvania and Lower Counties, while also serving as the latter’s speaker of the Assembly. Chew moved to Philadelphia in 1754 and built a successful private law practice to augment his public service career. As his various employments and enterprises flourished, Chew prospered, rising to the upper class in his adopted city. Chew owned an elegant town house on South 3rd Street. Here, he attended St. Peter’s Church and associated with many influential people in the city. He became involved in other business interests, including iron works and land speculation.
As a result of his close relationship with the Penn family, in 1774, Benjamin Chew was chosen to succeed his friend William Allen as chief justice of Pennsylvania. With the growth of tensions between the colonies and Great Britain, Chew at first supported the colonial cause but as the conflict became more intense, he did not advocate separation from England. His close ties to the proprietors and his unwillingness to support the revolution led to the loss of his government positions and banishment, with Governor John Penn, to Union Forge in New Jersey from 1777 to 1778. During this time, he kept up regular correspondence with his family. In 1777, the British occupied Cliveden, Chew’s country house, which became a main stage of the Battle of Germantown in October of 1777. Cliveden had been sold before the revolution, but was repurchased by the family in 1797, later becoming the center of the Chew family’s activities. Upon Benjamin Chew’s return to Philadelphia, he increased his land purchases, ultimately acquiring extensive property holdings in Pennsylvania, adding to inherited properties in Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. In 1791 he was appointed by Governor Thomas Mifflin to head the High Court of Errors and Appeals for the state of Pennsylvania, a position he held until 1806. At the end of his life, in 1810, Benjamin Chew had amassed a sizable fortune from land speculation and his legal practice.
Benjamin Chew’s son Benjamin Jr. (1758-1844) had become increasingly involved in his father’s affairs, practicing law with him, and managing the elder Benjamin’s land holdings, ultimately taking responsibility for the family’s plantations and the purchase and sale of slaves. In many ways, Benjamin Chew Jr. followed firmly in his father’s footsteps, studying law at the Middle Temple in London from 1784 to 1786, where he cultivated a relationship with the Penn family, before returning to practice law with his father and brother-in-law, Alexander Wilcocks. Within the law practice, Benjamin Jr. was brought into his father’s extensive financial affairs. It was at this time that Benjamin Chew and his son began to speculate in large quantities of land on the western Pennsylvania frontier. As time passed, the younger Chew gained more authority over the family’s financial endeavors. He increasingly acquired the primary responsibility for the legal work necessary to purchase and administer the burgeoning family land holdings. After his father’s death in 1810, Benjamin Jr. took over primary control of the family’s business interests. He also managed the personal, financial, and legal affairs of his three unwed sisters, Henrietta (1767-1848), Maria (1771-1840), and Catherine (1779-1831), as well as assisting his sister Harriet (1775-1861) with her estrangement from her husband, Charles Carroll, Jr. In addition, he served for a time as president of the Germantown and Perkiomen Turnpike Company. Reflecting his interest in education, Benjamin Jr. acted as a trustee for both the Germantown Academy and the University of Pennsylvania for a number of decades in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Benjamin Chew, Jr. married Katherine Banning (1770-1855) in 1789. Katherine Banning Chew was the daughter of Anthony Banning and Martha Spencer, of Kent County, Maryland. The couple had nine children who survived childhood: Benjamin III, Samuel, John, Eliza Margaretta, Henry Banning, William White, Anne Sophia Penn, Joseph Turner, and Anthony Banning. The family lived at the Chew town house in Philadelphia and Cliveden, which Benjamin Jr. inherited upon his father’s death in 1810. Through the years, the family was active in the Episcopal congregations of both St. Peter’s Church in Philadelphia and St. Luke’s Church in Germantown. Benjamin Jr. expanded the Cliveden property and turned it into a working farm during his tenure of ownership. Labor was provided by servants, both free and slave into the 1820s. In 1810, Chew commissioned a new family town house to be built on 4th Street. His death in 1844 ignited a contentious and lengthy family quarrel surrounding the distribution of his estate. The family’s disagreements had a great impact on the relationships between Benjamin Chew Jr.’s children and their mother.
The two oldest sons, Benjamin Chew III (1793-1864) and Samuel (1795-1841), practiced law together. The older of the two, Benjamin III served in the War of 1812 and married Elizabeth Tilghman (1796-1817) in 1816. Elizabeth died shortly after the marriage due to complications associated with child birth; the couple’s son William died at the age of three. Benjamin III never remarried. He managed his father’s land holdings in western Pennsylvania, and travelled a great deal throughout the state during the 1820s and 1830s. He was involved in the planning of the Pennsylvania and Ohio canal, and sometimes stayed at the family’s Horseshoe farm, in where his brothers Anthony and Joseph lived. Benjamin III moved to Pittsburgh for a time but spent the latter part of his life at Cliveden, and in the Philadelphia area. After his father’s death, Benjamin III was named as an executor of his father’s estate, but disputes with the other executors led to his dismissal from that position. He managed Katherine B. Chew’s affairs for a number of years after his father’s death; Benjamin III’s persuasion over his mother was strong, and he succeeded in turning her against the other executors, causing a major family rift that eventually resulted in his exile from the family. His brother Samuel led a quieter life, but developed a successful legal career in Philadelphia. He worked as solicitor for the Spring Garden district, represented the Kensington Bank, and acted as a trustee for the Wayne County Land Trust. In addition to his legal career, Samuel Chew was involved in the construction of a ship for the Mexican government called the Kensington (or Tepeyac); this venture ended with a legal battle, which lasted past Samuel’s death in 1841.
Benjamin Chew Jr.’s next son, John Chew (1797-1815), served aboard the USS Constellation as a midshipman and later on the USS Epervier, from which he was lost at sea. His sister Elizabeth (Eliza) Margaretta Chew (1798-1874) married James Murray Mason (1798-1871) of Virginia. Mason soon became an integral part of the Chew family and was chosen by Benjamin Chew Jr. as one of several executors of his will. James and Eliza had eight children: Anna, Benjamin, Catherine, George, Virginia, Ida, James, and John. The Chew family in Philadelphia maintained a close connection to the Masons and their children, even though the distance between them was significant. James M. Mason served as U.S. representative and senator but broke from the Union during the Civil War. Several of the Mason’s sons served in the Civil War; a number of the children remained in the South even after their parents and family exiled themselves in Canada at the end of the war. James M. Mason faced a possible charge of treason for his service to the Confederacy, and the others refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. They remained in Canada until after President Andrew Johnson granted unconditional amnesty to all Confederate loyalists on December 25, 1868. The family returned to Virginia and kept up their close relationship with Eliza’s siblings in Philadelphia and Maryland.
Henry Banning Chew (1800-1866) spent the majority of his life in Maryland on the family’s farm Epsom. Henry married twice, first to Harriet Ridgely (1803-1835), daughter of a Maryland governor, Charles Ridgely, and then to Elizabeth Ann Ralston (1793-1862). The first marriage produced eight offspring, of whom only Charles, Benjamin, and Samuel lived past twenty years of age. The family lived first at the Ridgely estate known as Hampton and then at Epsom, in Towson, Maryland, where Henry kept slaves and operated a farm on the property. In addition to farming, he had a small venture shipping goods between mid-Atlantic and Caribbean ports on his schooner the Morgiana. He established the firm of Luke and Chew with William Luke in the 1820s, but the business did not succeed, and ended with a legal dispute between the two former partners. Around the same time, Henry B. Chew was vice-consul to Mexico, and invested money with his brother Samuel in the construction of a ship for the Mexican government. After his father’s death in 1844, Henry B. Chew became one of the principal administrators of his father’s estate, managing the family’s property holdings in western Pennsylvania, along with James M. Mason and Henry’s brother William.
William White Chew (1803-1851) led a more public life than most of his brothers, serving as Vice-Consul of Colombia in Philadelphia during the early 1830s, and later as secretary to the American Legation in St. Petersburg, Russia when George Mifflin Dallas held the post of chargé d’affaires. Upon Dallas’ return to the United States, Chew was appointed as chargé d’affaires. After his departure from Russia, William spent a brief time working on Dallas’ political campaign. The two men had developed a close relationship during their service in Russia, and remained close throughout their lives. William White Chew never married, but he maintained an active social life until the last few years of his life, when he was in ill health. Throughout his life, William was a prolific writer, documenting many of his thoughts, beliefs, desires and disappointments. He co-authored the Vocabulary of Tuscarora.
Joseph Turner Chew (1806-1835) attended Princeton briefly, and then, in the 1820s, he settled in western Pennsylvania where he practiced law for a short period, and eventually married Sarah Ann Kirker, a union that yielded significant disapproval and distance from his family. Benjamin Chew Jr. allowed Joseph to rent Horseshoe Farm, but prohibited him from visiting the family in Philadelphia. Anthony Banning Chew (1809-1854) also lived in western Pennsylvania during the 1820s and 1830s. Like his brother, Anthony also worked at Horseshoe Farm. During this period, Anthony had power of attorney over the family’s lands in Butler and Beaver counties, acting as agent for his father. After problems caused by Anthony’s alcohol dependence, Benjamin Chew III took over the management of the lands, alleging mismanagement on Anthony’s part.
Anne Sophia Penn Chew (1805-1892), the youngest surviving daughter of Benjamin Chew Jr., lived at Cliveden for most of her life, and was an important figure in the history of the family estate. Anne was a devoted daughter, caring for her parents in their later years, and then becoming the caretaker of the Cliveden property after her mother’s death in 1855. During the bitter family dispute surrounding her father’s estate administration, Anne moved out of Cliveden, along with her brother William. The rights to Cliveden originally rested with her mother, Katherine Banning Chew, but Benjamin III soon created discord when he tried to deny other family members access to their father’s papers and made efforts to disinherit his siblings. During this dispute, Benjamin III removed some of the family’s furnishings and papers from the house. After he left Cliveden, Anne returned and began to maintain the property on her own, eventually welcoming her nephew Samuel, his wife Mary, and their children to the residence.
Samuel Chew (1832-1887) was one of eight offspring born to Henry B. and Harriet (Ridgely) Chew, Samuel studied law at the University of Pennsylvania. After his father’s death, he became the primary executor of the Chew estate. Samuel spent a considerable amount of time at Cliveden with his aunt Anne, developing a close relationship with her and a devotion to the family’s home. He married Mary Johnson Brown in 1861, daughter of textile manufacturer David Sands Brown (1800-1877), who moved to Philadelphia from Dover, New Hampshire in 1817, and married Elizabeth Jones Johnson in 1831. Brown was in great part responsible for the industrial development of Camden County, New Jersey during the second part of the nineteenth century.
Samuel Chew and his wife Mary split their time between Vanor (the Brown family mansion in Radnor), the family’s townhouse at 1716 Walnut, and Cliveden. Samuel worked for his father-in-law administering the family textile operations in Gloucester City, New Jersey. He used the occasion of the 1876 Centennial celebration to recast the family’s Revolutionary War credentials and re-establish the Chews in their role as colonial elites. In this endeavor, he began to emphasize the family genealogy, safeguarding the family documents that make up this collection more as a means to affirm the Chew’s heritage than as legal records. This concentration in preserving the family story continued through the gifting of the records to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the same time that Samuel was working on his Centennial project, his wife Mary became very active in the restoration of Independence Hall and Stenton.
Samuel and Mary had six children; Anne, Elizabeth, David, Samuel, Benjamin, and Oswald. The close bonds between these children and their great aunt Anne helped soothe the tensions between their mother and Anne. As the children reached adulthood, most began to go their separate ways. Anne (1862-1930) married Vere Speke Alston in 1898. Alston worked for the British government in Court of Appeals of the Native Tribunal in Egypt, and the couple split their time between Cairo and England. David (1866-1934), the eldest son and namesake of his grandfather, attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania and managed the family’s real estate ventures in Radnor Township and Camden County. He was also actively involved in Philadelphia politics, served in the National Guard and the First Troop of Philadelphia Cavalry, and was a member of various associations, including the University Barge Club, Philadelphia Gun Club, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. His marriage to Bertha (Daisy) Walton produced two children, David Jr. and Mary Evelyn. Both Samuel (1871-1919) and Oswald (1880-1950) attended Harvard as undergraduates and studied law at the University of Pennsylvania. They served in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps in France during World War I, along with Oswald’s wife Ada Knowlton Chew. Oswald received the Croix de Guerre award for his service in France, and when he returned to Philadelphia, he managed the family’s trust and worked in the real estate business. Following his military service, Samuel practiced law in Philadelphia, acting as an assistant city solicitor. He inherited the Cliveden estate after his Aunt Anne’s death, but chose not to live there, instead residing near Boston and renting the home to his siblings. After Anne Sophia Penn Chew’s death in 1892, Mary Johnson Brown Chew and her daughter, Elizabeth Brown Chew (1863-1958), became the primary guardians of the Germantown mansion.
Elizabeth acted as a custodian for the Cliveden property, living there for most of her adult life. After her mother’s death, she advocated for Cliveden’s historic preservation and undertook renovations to the property at her own expense. She acted as one of the agents for the Chew Family Trust and managed Cliveden’s affairs until her nephew Samuel (1915-1989), who was heir to the property, reached legal age. Elizabeth never married, but she maintained an active social life, traveling extensively overseas throughout her life and entertaining at Cliveden. After her death, Samuel moved in to Cliveden with his family, and maintained the property until its donation to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1972.
The Chew Family Papers is a remarkable collection due to its range, depth, and scope. Nearly every major subject in early American history is touched upon in these papers; the date span of the collection allows for a study of the trajectory of American social, political, and economic development through the lens of one prominent family. This collection is the product of seven generations of the Chew family’s professional and personal lives. Many of the papers were created during the late eighteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries, but they continued to be used over the course of the next one hundred years by the family as they settled estates, sold off land, and sought to settle debts. While the papers were an integral part of the management of the family’s financial affairs, the Chews also prized the papers as part of their heritage.
Around the time of the Centennial celebration in the United States, the Chews began to recognize the legacy of their family in the early history of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, and spent a great deal of time inventorying and describing the contents of the papers. The Chew family became archivists of their own records, maintaining the collection as a whole and retrieving portions of the papers that had been lost or sold during the nineteenth century. They stored some records in safe deposit boxes, and other portions of the collection were arranged methodically throughout Cliveden. They created extensive descriptions of where groups of materials were stored and arranged them by family member, an arrangement that has largely been maintained. Some of these inventories can be found within the collection; others are housed in the collection files, which may be accessed by asking an archivist for permission to view these files.
The materials in this collection cover a wide range of topics, reflecting the Chew family’s involvement in legal, business, political, private, and social spheres. A large portion of the documents in the Chew Family Papers are related to legal work done by many of the Chews. Benjamin Sr., Benjamin Jr., Benjamin III, Samuel (d. 1841), Samuel (d. 1887), Samuel (d. 1919), and David S. B. Chew all worked as attorneys, litigating varied case loads, both public and private. In addition to their case records, there are legal papers throughout the collection; especially significant are those that document the dispute over Benjamin Chew Jr.’s estate. These materials appear in series 4-10, and in Series 19 (Pennsylvania Land Papers). The legal records in this collection reflect the development of law in the United States, from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. Benjamin Chew Sr.’s work in the early court system is well represented, documenting his connection to the Penn family, his participation in the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary commission, and his role as secretary at treaty hearings with the Delaware Indians. Benjamin Chew Jr. worked on a number of significant cases that are highlighted in Series 4, Ingram and Bridger Lands, Nicklin and Griffith, Penn Family Papers, and Pike v. Hoare subseries. He also litigated many smaller cases that are included in the Legal subseries of Series 4.
Other business activities that generated the materials in the Chew Family Papers include land speculation and management, agriculture and plantation operation, mercantile trade and industrial development, and politics. Politics played an important role in many of the Chews’ lives, with nearly all of the men in the family participating in local, national, or international politics in some way. Benjamin Chew Sr. and Benjamin Chew Jr. were involved with political figures through their legal work; Benjamin Chew III attempted a run for a local political post; Henry B. Chew served as vice-consul of Mexico in Philadelphia; William W. Chew served in several consular positions. The family had close connections with George M. Dallas and James M. Mason, among other national figures. Later generations of the Chew family served as city solicitors and city council members, in addition to their involvement with real estate development.
Records of the Chews’ land purchases and the management of these properties are distributed through nearly every series in the collection, but are concentrated in series 19-23. Because of their use over the course of one hundred and fifty years, papers that originally documented a purchase of property might have ended up with legal files related to Benjamin Chew Jr.’s estate, or surveys drawn by Henry B. Chew may have come to rest in the Pennsylvania Land Papers. The relationships between these materials are best reconstructed by review of Series 4, Estate Administration—Benjamin Chew Jr., Series 7, Henry B. Chew, and series 19-23, Land Papers. While every attempt was made to understand the materials and return them to their creator’s series, the land papers are so extensive as to make this impractical. These papers are rich in detail, and contain information about land speculation; settlement; landlord-tenant relationships; mineral rights; canal, railroad, and road construction; early county histories; laws governing speculation and land use; and relationships between agents and land owners. In addition to the correspondence, agreements, and account records documenting land purchases and management, there are many maps and manuscript surveys associated with the land papers. These papers also contain many legal documents, which outline ejectment cases, trespassing claims, negotiation of agreements, and disputes with agents over payment and terms of service.
Negotiations between the Chews and the overseers of their plantations in Maryland and Delaware are detailed in the Maryland and Delaware Land Papers (series 20 and 22), as well as in the correspondence of Benjamin Chew Sr. (Series 2), Samuel Chew (d. 1809) (Series 3), Benjamin Chew Jr. (Series 4), and Henry B. Chew (Series 7). These records contain significant evidence of the enslaved people who worked on the Chews’ plantations, and include discussions and agreements for sale and transfer of individuals and family groups, allowing researchers to track the movement of people from one area to another and surmise whether families were kept together or separated. Estate inventories in series 1 through 7 are also good sources for this information. The letters, agreements, lists, and notes throughout the first seven series and in the land papers provide a picture of the Chews’ management of their plantations and their treatment of the workers, whether hired or enslaved. These same materials document the practice of agriculture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, offering itemized descriptions of the crops cultivated, how weather patterns impacted crop yields, prices of sale, and losses.
Later in the collection, the Chew family’s business interests shifted from land management to industrial and real estate development. Beginning with the records of David Sands Brown and Company (Series 13), the papers document the development of Camden County during the mid-to-late nineteenth century with blueprints, maps, plans, surveys and business records pertaining to Brown’s business ventures in Gloucester City, New Jersey. Brown’s textile mills, along with the associated Manufacturer’s Land and Improvement and the Gloucester Land companies, greatly influenced the development of the Delaware River waterfront. The Brown and Johnson Families series documents the development of the shipping industry and the construction and extension of wharves on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware River, extending south to Greenwich Island. Descendants of the Brown and Chew families also developed areas of Radnor Township, forming the Radnor Realty Company, which remained viable into the twentieth century. With the union of the Brown and Chew families, the Chews’ fortunes began to shift after the draining estate dispute over Benjamin Chew Jr.’s property. David Sands Brown’s focus on creating an industrial economy enlivened the financial prospects of the Chew family, and offered them new social connections.
The Chews’ social and personal lives make up another significant focus of the collection. Correspondence, diaries, notes and telegrams illuminate the Chews’ family relationships and their personal views and beliefs. The letters in Series 2, Benjamin Chew Sr., document Benjamin Chew’s confinement at the Union Forge in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War. During this separation from his family, his correspondence focuses on his desire to see his wife and children and describes his often-delicate health. Letters between Benjamin and his brother Samuel touch on health concerns, as well as discussions of their mutual interest in the family’s Maryland plantations. Business matters mix with personal throughout the collection, as many of the Chews worked together in some capacity. This is especially true in the correspondence of both Benjamin Chew Jr. and Henry B. Chew. Benjamin Chew Jr.’s correspondence is voluminous, and covers nearly every subject relevant to the Chew family, as he wrote to family, friends, political figures, and business associates. Benjamin Jr. wrote at great length to his children, many of whom settled outside of Philadelphia. Henry B. Chew’s papers are rich with details about slavery in Maryland, but also describe in great detail his health problems, his religious views, and his loneliness after his first wife’s death (and during the illness of his second wife). William White Chew’s letters and journals are deeply revealing of his personal views and state of mind, and offer a perspective on the bachelor culture of the early nineteenth century that is unique in this collection. His correspondence is particularly detailed during his service in Russia from 1837 through 1841.
Later in the collection, correspondence between Anne Sophia Penn Chew and her friends and relatives offer a different perspective on the Chew family. These letters are intimate portrayals of female relationships in the nineteenth century, with deep discussions of health, love, marriage, childrearing, and loss. Similarly, Mary Johnson Brown Chew’s letters illuminate the nature of her friendships and family relationships, especially highlighting her relationship with her children after the death of her husband Samuel in 1887. Her journals reveal her political beliefs and her personal doubts, fears, and joys. Samuel Chew’s correspondence with his Aunt Anne and his wife and children are highly emotional, and provide a perspective on the jealousy that sometimes plagued their family interactions. Samuel, Mary, and Anne also kept up a lively correspondence with their family in Maryland and Virginia. The letters between the Philadelphia Chews, Henry B. Chew, and James M. and Eliza Mason (as well as their children Virginia, Ida, George, and James Mason’s sister “Teaco”) is detailed, lengthy, and provides great insight into the schism that formed between North and South before, during, and after the Civil War. Their letters detail the devastation of the South’s economy during the Civil War, and discuss heatedly the belief systems that separate southerners from northerners. Though the Philadelphia Chews disagreed with the Masons’ stance on the war, they maintained a close connection, even when the Mason family moved to Canada after the end of the war.
The Chew family’s letters and journals offer insights into the shifting cultural views in the developing United States, and reveal a great deal about the structure of their family, the changing roles of men and women in society and the family, relationships between parents and children, developments in health care and disease treatment, religious views, love and romance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shifts in emotional expression, among other topics. These papers may also be useful in the study of mental health, as some of the family’s journals, correspondence, memos, and notes suggest that there were issues with depression and alcoholism. The papers of Benjamin III (Series 5), Henry (Series 7), William (Series 8), Anne (Series 9), Anthony, Joseph (both in Series 17), and Samuel (Series 12) are worthy of study. Box 330, folder 10 contains drafts and revisions of suicide notes William White Chew wrote over the course of a decade. Anne and William frequently discuss Anthony’s intemperance in their correspondence, journals, and notes. Henry’s letters contain many discussions of his depressed state. Samuel’s papers document his treatment by a psychiatrist and contain allusions to an automobile accident that occurred while he was drinking. Other information about the Chews’ personal and family lives may be gained from a study of their account records. These receipts, ledgers, day books, balance sheets and notes document the Chew family’s expenditures in great detail, offering insights into what they ate and drank, how they dressed and traveled, how much they paid to their servants and the laborers who built and maintained Cliveden, money they gained from their purchase and employment of slaves, and funds derived from, or diminished by, their real estate holdings.
Studies of material culture can be made from the Chew family’s purchases for their daughters’ dowries (Series 2), furnishings and other household items (present in nearly every series), ephemera (Series 26, and throughout), and their extensive map collection. This group of materials, which makes up Series 25, Maps and Surveys, is impressive in its scope. There are manuscript maps of early Philadelphia streets and printed maps of early Pennsylvania, including Thomas Holme’s Portraiture of the City of Philadelphia and Nicholas Scull’s Map of the Improved Part of the Province of Pennsylvania. Also included in their collection are a series of maps of the world’s continents, which range in date from circa 1820 to the 1840s. The maps in this collection represent well-known cartographers, as well as the Chews’ own work as surveyors of their land holdings. Their collection of books was donated to the Library Company of Philadelphia, but copies of some title pages are included in Series 29, Miscellaneous. The Chew family genealogy can be traced in a series of reproductions of birth, marriage and death records listed on pages of family bibles. These items are included in Series 27. The photographs in Series 28 provide a visual record of the Chew family and their homes in Philadelphia and Maryland.
This collection is divided into twenty-nine series. Unless otherwise noted, the date spans in the overview of arrangement refer to the dates of the materials included in each series. The correspondence in each series is arranged by correspondent and then chronologically. Correspondence is generally grouped with the papers of the recipient, but some letters may also be housed in the papers of the author. In cases where there are one to three letters from an individual, that correspondence is generally filed under “Miscellaneous,” alphabetically by the last name of the author. The box and folder listings for each series provide the most detailed account of a series’ contents; please consult these lists for a comprehensive understanding of the materials in the Chew Family Papers. A note on terminology: in documents that comprise this collection, the word “negro” is often used to describe individuals; similarly, the word “slave” is used to denote individuals bought and sold by the Chew family. We have retained this wording for the sake of simplicity, and because favored terminology changes rapidly, but we firmly acknowledge the problematic nature of these terms.
Benjamin Chew's correspondence is particularly rich during the period of 1777-1778, when he was held as a prisoner at the Union Forge in New Jersey with John Penn. These letters not only describe his separation from his family, but also discuss the state of the nation during the Revolution. Benjamin Chew’s correspondence with political and military figures hints at his ambivalence about the war and discusses the roles of his associates in carrying out military actions. Letters from his wife, Elizabeth Oswald Chew, document the attempts made by his children to visit him at Union Forge, provide updates about the health and welfare of the family, and relay Elizabeth's concerns about Benjamin's comfort and health.
Correspondence between Benjamin Chew and his son Benjamin Jr. is particularly informative. Throughout these letters, father and son write about legal matters, including Benjamin Jr.’s studies at the Middle Temple in London and the Chews’ representation of the Penn family. The two also discuss their opinions of British and Colonial politics. Many of the letters dwell on family and business affairs—the illnesses and deaths that took place during the elder Benjamin’s absence, the disappointing harvests on various plantations, purchases of land, and news about how the war affected the city. These letters reflect Benjamin Chew Jr.’s role as his father’s agent in land transactions and plantation operations, and offer limited details about the Chews' slaves—and reminders of the persistence of northern slavery in the early republic.
In one letter, Benjamin Chew Jr. relates a story about some of the Chew slaves who escaped: "Ned arrived here…in Search of Mr. Bennet Chew’s Negroes. he came up by Permission from Col. Duff….he obtained most of the Negroes [and] has sent some of them to their Plantation, His Fortune was not single, your Man Aaron that went off from my Uncle Samls Tired of his Frolick came voluntarily [and] solicited for his Return to his Master—he was immediately upon my Application discharged from the Service in which he was employed and ordered into my possession, he now waits an Opportunity of going down—Will, I fear has made his Escape to some other Country but the Hardships he must experience from a different Way of living than that in your Employ, will sufficiently furnish his Ingratitude" (January 19, 1778).
In another letter, Benjamin Chew Jr. informs his father about the details of settling his uncle John Chew’s estate: "I found it absolutely necessary to return to this Place which I did last Evening and tomorrow sell off the Remains of any poor Uncle John’s Remnants...I have fortunately succeeded in providing Homes for all but 7 or 8 of the Black People—a Task indeed of the most conflicting Difficulty—I have I believe succeeded in giving the poor Creatures as much Satisfaction as they could have, under a disappointment in not having their Freedom bequeathed to them—they generally thank me for what I have done for them—the Stock of all kinds I have also sold except what is necessary to retain to secure the Crops" (November 15, 1809).
Discussions about the Chew family's slaves appear elsewhere in the correspondence. In 1804, Joseph, a slave on one of the Chews' farms in Kent County, Maryland, wrote to Benjamin Chew asking to be hired out so that he could be closer to his wife, who had been transferred to Baltimore. Correspondence with various overseers provides information about plantation operations and the treatment of slaves. One overseer, William Pearce, wrote to Chew in 1807 about Tom Miller, who had run away from one of the Chews' plantations in Kent County, Maryland. Pearce expressed concern that other slaves would follow Miller's example if he was allowed to escape. A few weeks later, Pearce wrote again to let Chew know that Miller had been caught and seemed to be on good behavior since receiving "a slight chastisement." Other correspondents who were involved in farming and plantation operations include Kensey Johns, George Ford, and Edward Tilghman. Their letters focus primarily on the mundane aspects of farming, such as crop yield, expenses, and weather.
Receipts and other records created during Benjamin Chew, Jr.'s administration of the estate are filed in Series IV, Family Estates. Benjamin Chew, Jr.'s notes sometimes include references to his administration of the estates of his brothers John and Samuel Chew, which took place during the same time as the settlement of his father's estate.
Because the boundary dispute lasted so long, the range of materials in this subseries is quite broad. The records here document the boundary commissioners’ and surveyors’ work through correspondence, notes, and proposals for methods of calculating the line. Many of the records pertain to the legal dispute between Penn and Baltimore, and include addresses, affidavits, agreements, complaints, commissions, correspondence, depositions, reports, petitions, testimony, interrogatories, minutes of the Boundary Commission, notes, patents, surveys, and maps. The accounts, correspondence, and surveyor's notes illustrate the arduous nature of conducting the survey, provide details about the relationships between commissioners and surveyors, and document the materials purchased over the course of the survey.
The account records are primarily comprised of receipts for expenses incurred during the surveying of the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. These expenses include food, clothing, instruments, chocolate, tea, large quantities of rum, and the travel costs of the survey teams and the boundary commissioners. There are bills from inns that include food, drink and lodging, as well as fodder and lodging for the team's horses. Because of the number of people involved in the survey, there are long lists of disbursements made to laborers and surveyors. A large portion of the disbursements were managed by Richard Peters, one of the boundary commissioners, who conducted much of the business for the commission. He was responsible for tracking the progress of the survey and making certain that the surveyors and their teams had enough supplies.
The correspondence includes discussions about surveying techniques, the considerable obstacles involved in surveying (including disease, near-starvation, and unfavorable weather conditions), the mathematical calculations necessary to obtain an accurate measurement of the line, the relations with Indian tribes throughout the disputed territory, and the negotiations between the governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Pennsylvania surveyors included Thomas Fairman, James Alexander, John Watson, John Lukens, Archibald McClean, John Ewing, and finally, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who were sent over from London to finish the survey. Mason and Dixon were commissioned in 1763, and completed the survey in 1768. Charles Mason worked as assistant observer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London. Jeremiah Dixon was employed as a surveyor, and had worked previously with Mason.
John Ewing, in his 1766 letter to the Pennsylvania commissioners, provides clear details on the survey process, and discusses the addition of Mason and Dixon to the survey team: "The Surveyors have finished their observations...and can now ascertain with Precision how many Miles make a Degree of Longitude in this Latitude. When we consider, that the Instruments are now in good Order for compleating the work [and] may not be so some years hence, that we now have Gentlemen from England, who are well acquainted with the Business, Chain Carriers, who have been for some years past engaged in Measuring, [and] other Persons used to the work, together with Waggons [and] other Utensils now in order...it may appear advisable to finish the Work at this Time" (John Ewing to Commissioners, November 5th, 1766).
This subseries documents the Treaty hearings that took place in Easton, Pennsylvania during the years of 1756 and 1762. After the first proceedings, the Council of the Committee to Review the Complaints of the Delaware Indians produced a report, to which were annexed copies of the documents referenced during the hearings. The affidavits, depositions, copies of deeds, maps and surveys that were cited as evidence are all included in this subseries, along with the Committee’s report, providing a fairly comprehensive view of the proceedings at Easton, at least from the perspective of the Council. Also included here are complaints made by Teedyuscung, the Delaware chief, and documents related to the Seven Years’ War and the violence that led up to the treaty hearings.
Teedyuscung was the main representative of Indian claims in the Treaty at Easton. The five claims he presented, which are listed in the Council’s report, were that the land was fraudulently taken from the Delaware people; that the deed presented by the Penns was forged; that lands were purchased from tribes that did not actually own them, and the sales were therefore void; that the Walking Purchase was unfairly performed; and finally, that settlers on the land had mistreated them and stopped them from hunting and collecting firewood as was their custom.
This subseries contains accounts, bonds, correspondence, deeds, estate inventories, leases, legal documents, and materials documenting the sale and transfer of several slaves from Benjamin Chew to Margaret Oswald Smyth.
While many of Benjamin Chew’s letters to his brother Samuel dwell on the day to day happenings in his household, often reporting in great detail about the health of his family, numerous others touch on significant national and international events. In March of 1793, he wrote about the execution of Louis XVI of France; other letters discuss attacks on ships near Boston [undated], South Carolina’s adoption of the Constitution (1788), trade in the West Indies (1794), and protests against the Jay Treaty that included a march to Kensington where Jay’s effigy was burned (1795). Throughout his letters, Benjamin describes treaty negotiations in Europe, political disputes between the states and among member of Congress, and military actions in America and abroad, sharing his thoughts on these events freely. Other letters focus on the operation of Samuel’s plantations and problems encountered with crops, overseers, and slaves. In several letters written during 1803, Benjamin recounts information he has obtained about some slaves who had escaped from Rich Neck plantation, and beseeches Samuel to treat these escapes seriously. In his letter of June 9, 1803, Benjamin recounts the case of Jacob, who was being brought before the mayor. "I know that he is a Rascal [and] deserves to be made an example of, [and] can have no claim but on your mercy, [and] It behoves you to consider What effect humanity extended to him may have on your other negroes".
Benjamin Chew Jr. wrote in greater detail about the financial aspects of the plantations. In a series of letters during 1801-1803, Benjamin Jr. updates his uncle Samuel about William Pearce’s accounts as overseer, and asks if he has heard word from Mr. Pearce. In addition to financial updates, Benjamin Jr. offers his advice on the timing of crop sales: “A late Arrival from Liverpool with Letters to the 7th July mentions that a Commercial Treaty is in forwardness between Brittain [and] France that the Prospect was of Provision + Flour being low…therefore the Expediency of your selling your Crops this Fall. Wheat is in this Neighbourhood at the Mills from 10/ to 10/4_ the Interuption to poor Philad- must affect the Market on this Bay + River”(25 August 1802).
In some letters, Benjamin Jr. mentions political affairs and his legal work, but the majority of them describe the health problems of family members. He frequently writes about his parents’ health or offers reports about his wife, sisters, and aunts during pregnancy and after childbirth; some letters offer hopeful accounts of the new mothers’ progress toward health, while others raise concern about maternal and infant mortality. In 1795, Benjamin Jr. relayed the news that two of his young children succumbed to the fever that they had struggled against. “I have little other Command of myself to say more to you than that I thank you for the feeling Manner in which you regard the Misery of my present Situation….my Children were my greatest Comfort in Life and were just at a period when they were becoming more and more interesting – but they are gone – ” (April 7 1795). Overall, these letters make clear that illnesses could quickly become fatal, and that medical care was often not enough to stave off fevers and infections.
Other correspondence in this subseries includes letters from Samuel’s wife and daughter, business associates, and debtors, as well as a pass for one of Samuel’s slaves to attempt the retrieval of some slaves who ran away from the plantation.
Samuel Chew and General Benjamin Chambers owned Morgan's Creek Mill in Kent County, Maryland jointly then sold it to Thomas Murphy in 1808. For many years, Chew's and Chambers's accounts remained unsettled as neither was sure exactly what monies he had paid and received. The Morgan's Creek Mill files record their transactions until the account was finally settled in 1822 by the executors of their estates.
A day book and a ledger record transactions from 1809-1819. The day book lists transactions chronologically, including household expenses, property sold, slaves hired out, payments on bonds and debts, and inheritance payments to family members. The ledger records transactions chronologically within account and includes an alphabetical index in the front of the volume. Accounts in stocks and cash, with individuals, businesses, and banks are inlcuded. Receipts and other records created during Benjamin Chew Jr.'s administration of the estate are filed in Series 4, Family Estates. Benjamin Chew Jr.'s notes frequently include references to his administration of John Chew's estate, which took place during the same time as the settlement of Samuel Chew's estate.
One of the most significant subjects included in Benjamin Chew Jr.'s correspondence is that of slavery. This series contains detailed discussions about the transfer and sale of many slaves, including information about family groups and the requests made by particular slaves to be placed in specific situations (or their objections to those placements). Among the many exchanges that shed light on the Chews' involvement in the slave trade are the letters of Thomas Buchanan, who was hired to retrieve slaves, William and James E. Barroll and James Scanlan, who acted as agents for some of the Chews' plantations, his uncle Samuel Chew, who ran a plantation in Maryland, and George Vickers, who was an overseer and agent in Maryland. John Chew’s correspondence details transactions on several of the Chews’ Maryland farms, and discusses the slaves who worked on the farms and in Philadelphia. In many instances, John Chew mentions sending messages with a man named “Dick,” who likely worked for Samuel Chew in Maryland. In addition to these letters, there are brief exchanges about particular slaves throughout Benjamin Chew's letters.
Benjamin Jr.'s correspondence with his brother-in-law James Eager Howard covers a wide range of topics, including family news, particularly family illnesses and news of Benjamin Jr.'s sons Benjamin III and Samuel, who attended a boarding school near the Howards' home in Maryland; business affairs such as land dealings; European and American politics and economics; slavery, including discussion of the potential legal consequences of allowing a slave to hire himself out in Maryland; and the affairs of Harriet (Chew) Carroll, for whom Howard served as a joint trustee in Benjamin Sr.'s estate and as an advocate with the Carroll family.
The Chews' legal and land interests are well represented in the correspondence, and reference materials in other subseries, especially Family Estates, Ingram and Bridger Lands, Legal, Nicklin and Griffith, the Penn Family Papers, and Pike v. Hoare.
James Barroll's letters discuss the Tilghman estate, which became the focus of a lengthy legal battle over lands throughout Pennsylvania that were purchased through a trust with Edward Tilghman and others. David and Robert Barclay's correspondence provides insight into Benjamin Chew Jr.’s relationship with the Penns, especially his work for Richard Penn, and touches on other significant legal cases including Pike v. Hoare and ejectments from Turner and Sarah Camac's property.
Chew's land interests were centered in Pennsylvania, where he and his sons Anthony, Joseph, Benjamin III, and Samuel owned numerous farms and tracts of land in Butler, Beaver, Bedford, and Indiana counties. His correspondence with his sons offers advice and admonitions about the management of this property, and discusses various legal disputes with their tenants. These letters also illustrate family disputes about property management, especially in the case of Anthony B. Chew, whose responsibilities as agent were transferred first to his brother Benjamin and then to Christian Buhl. Anthony protested this decision and appealed to his father, who chastised Anthony for his poor management of the land and finances. Christian Buhl's letters address this shift in power, offering an alternate view of the situation in Butler County, and providing a description of Joseph Turner Chew's death and the state of his affairs. Benjamin Chew III's correspondence is rich with details of legal actions related to the land in western Pennsylvania and recounts family discussions and disagreements about land management and various estate interests. Correspondence related to the Chews’ land holdings may also be found in Series 19-23, which contain materials related to land in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and other states.
Benjamin Jr. administered trusts for his sisters throughout their lives, and this relationship is reflected in their letters back and forth. Harriet (Chew) Carroll's troubled marriage to Charles Carroll, Jr. was the subject of several letters between Harriet and Benjamin, Jr. and was discussed with other family members as well. Benjamin Jr. advocated for Harriet in letters to her husband and her father-in-law, insisting that Charles Jr. be prevented from abusing Harriet or their children. John Eager Howard frequently intervened on Harriet's behalf. Correspondence related to the division of property and administration of various estates may also be found in the Family Estates subseries.
In addition to business and estate matters, this correspondence contains a wealth of information about the health and daily lives of Benjamin Chew Jr.’s friends and family. Many correspondents write in great detail about their medical conditions, treatments received from doctors or with home remedies, and the challenges of maintaining wellness.
Benjamin Chew Jr. was involved in the administration of several family members' estates. They are ordered chronologically by death date of the family member. Benjamin Jr.'s estate is also included here because it was so closely intertwined with his father's estate. Benjamin Sr.'s estate was not settled for many years after his death and Benjamin Jr. became very involved in the partition and sale of lands his father owned throughout Pennsylvania. The overlap of their affairs continued in the settlement of Benjamin Jr.'s estate.
Because Benjamin Chew Sr. and his brothers John and Samuel died within a few years of each other and their affairs were often closely linked, Benjamin Chew Jr.'s records of his administration of their estates overlap at times. Within the estates papers of each brother and Benjamin Jr.'s mother, Elizabeth (Oswald) Chew, notes and accounts of more than one of these family members are sometimes present on the same document.
Benjamin Sr. was heavily involved in land speculation throughout Pennsylvania, as well as in New Jersey and other states. He purchased large quantities of land in several Pennsylvania counties from James Wilson (often referred to collectively as the "Wilson lands") in the late 1790s. Because Benjamin Jr. was also heavily involved in the family's land speculation, it is nearly impossible to separate Benjamin Chew Jr.’s affairs from his father's, therefore some materials pertaining to the family's lands outside of Philadelphia are filed with Benjamin Jr.'s estate records. Other materials pertaining to the administration of Benjamin Chew’s estate are located in Henry Banning Chew’s papers. Materials related to land purchases made by Benjamin Sr. may also be found in Series 18-23.
Benjamin Chew Jr. appointed several executors in his will: his wife Katherine (Banning) Chew, his sons Benjamin Chew III, Henry B. Chew, William White Chew, and his son-in-law James Murray Mason. Conflict developed among the executors soon after Benjamin Jr.'s death. Benjamin III and Katherine disagreed with Henry, William, and James Murray Mason's management of the estate. Benjamin III believed that he should have more influence in the matters of the estate and at times suggested that he should be the primary, if not sole, executor. He instigated many legal battles with the other executors. Within a year after Benjamin Jr.'s death, Henry, William, and James Murray Mason succeeded in removing Benjamin III and Katherine as executors. Benjamin Jr.'s will included a clause stating that the executors should agree amongst themselves, by majority rule if needed, in the management of his estate and that if any executor disputed a decision made by the majority, that person would be disinherited. The executors successfully used this clause against Benjamin III. For a time, Katherine supported Benjamin III, who was living at Cliveden with her. Eventually, she asked that her name be removed from all pending legal action, saying that she loved and supported all of her sons and did not wish to be involved in their conflict any longer.
After Katherine's death in 1855, Benjamin III caused more uproar in the affairs of the estate, as he fought the executors' attempts to sell Cliveden and Benjamin Jr.'s numerous tracts of land elsewhere in Pennsylvania in accordance with his will. This subseries documents a portion of the lengthy legal battle over Benjamin Jr.’s estate, primarily comprising the legal documents and formal actions brought to court. The materials pertaining to the case of Chew v. Chew (1844-1864, undated) include petitions, arguments, and evidence produced by Benjamin III and his brothers until Benjamin III's death in 1864. Another legal case, Chew et al v. Rawle et al (1838-1863, undated), which focused primarily on the land holdings of Benjamin Chew Jr., is also represented in this subseries. Edward Tilghman and Benjamin Sr. had purchased large quantities of land in several Pennsylvania counties from James Wilson (often referred to collectively as the "Wilson lands") in the late 1790s. Henry and the other executors sued Benjamin III along with his partners William Rawle and George Cadwalader in the "Wayne Trust" (also referred to as the "Lycoming Trust") for monies they believed that Benjamin III owed the estate from his work with the Pennsylvania lands. Many of the other legal documents in this section pertain to the several audits of the administrators' accounts and the executors' and Benjamin III's appeals to the auditors. Legal counsel involved in the estate disputes other than the executors included George M. Dallas, Samuel Chew (son of Henry B. Chew), Marcellus Mundy, Eli K. Price, R.C. McMurtrie, and Henry J. Williams.
Benjamin Jr.'s executors devoted substantial time to administering and selling the lands that he and Benjamin Sr. held throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They employed agents in each county with land to be sold and also periodically traveled to each area themselves. Agreements with purchasers, accounts with agents, and discussions with a railroad company regarding the right-of-way near Chewton (Beaver/Lawrence Co., Pennsylvania) are particularly well represented. Records of land sales from the Cliveden estate in Germantown and Anne Sophia Penn Chew's purchase of Cliveden are also included here. Many of the other series in the Chew Family Papers shed light on the family dispute, especially the papers of Benjamin Jr.’s children, series 5-9, and Katherine Banning Chew’s papers in Series 17. The land papers (series 19-23) also contain information relevant to Benjamin Chew Jr.’s estate and the sales of lands after his death.
Some of the documents describe decisions by state legislative bodies regarding the dispute between the turnpike administration and the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. In 1822, the House of Representatives established a committee to work out a way to make all state roads free. The Germantown and Perkiomen Turnpike Road Company opposed the plan, arguing that there was already a "diminution of income [produced by the] continued evasion of toll payment".
After much negotiation, both Benjamin Chew Jr. and Benjamin Chew Sr. agreed to act as attorneys for Thomas Ingram and John and Rebecca Bridger in 1795. They replaced Timothy Hurst who, according to letters written by the Chews, had allowed Ingram and Bridger's affairs in the United States to become scattered. Hurst was seen as an untrustworthy character by many of the tenants on Ingram and Bridger's land, which posed problems for his agency. The Chews executed bonds and agreements and represented Ingram and Bridger in ejectment proceedings in the New Jersey Supreme Court. In addition to legal work, Benjamin Chew Jr. acted as agent for Ingram and Bridger, facilitating sales of land in New Jersey, dealing with tenants on the properties, and managing the finances. Related materials can be found in the Penn Family Papers subseries.
The firm accrued many debts, and after Nicklin's death, there was significant overlap between Philip Nicklin's estate and the affairs of the firm. Philip Nicklin's estate was administered by Benjamin Chew Jr. and Juliana Nicklin, and is included in the Family Estates subseries. Nicklin and Griffith borrowed money on bond from both Benjamin Jr. and Benjamin Sr., the non-payment of which resulted in the suit Chew v. Griffith, as well as a separate suit in the Nicklin estate papers, Chew v. Chew and Nicklin. Many of the documents in this subseries are related to legal cases, but there are also account records, correspondence, agreements, and land papers.
In addition to representing the Penns in legal disputes, Benjamin Chew also served as an agent in the Penns' property sales and rentals. Included in this subseries are accounts with tenants, surveys of land, payments for supplies to repair property, deeds, and leases. Among the many areas illuminated by the papers in this subseries are John Penn's estate, land speculation, the Northern Liberties property that was inherited by Mary (Masters) Penn and her sister Sarah (Masters) Camac, and the debts Penn incurred in his business dealings. Some of the papers in this subseries overlap with other parts of the collections because of the Chews' heavy involvement in the Penns' affairs. Related materials may be found in Benjamin Chew Sr.'s correspondence, papers on the Treaty at Easton and the Pennsylvania/Maryland boundary dispute, and in Benjamin Chew Jr.'s papers on the Ingram and Bridger lands.
Hoare had contracted with agents T. [and] W. Lightfoot, who were given the power to sell this property, draft and execute deeds, and accept payment for the land. They formed the Pikeland Company and parceled off thousands of acres of land to tenants, who agreed that Hoare had ultimate property rights. The case is complex, but an important element of the claim against Hoare's ownership relates to the fact that Hoare had not gotten payment for property sold to tenants because many sales happened during the Revolutionary War and, therefore, transmission of money to England was prohibited. The entirety of the case is outlined in the copies of the records, including accounts, correspondence, legal papers, deeds, surveys, and maps.
In other letters, Benjamin III and his correspondents frequently discussed lands, business, and legal cases. After Benjamin Jr.'s death in 1844, Benjamin III's involvement in these issues often related to his father's estate. He exchanged letters with Henry B. and William White Chew, James Murray Mason, and Katherine (Banning) Chew about the family's disagreements over the handling of the estate and possession of Cliveden. Benjamin III corresponded with several attorneys about his legal battles with his family and Chew v. Chew, including Eli K. Price, Charles Ingersoll, J. R. Ingersoll, Edward D. Ingraham, and William Rawle. Substantial third party correspondence among these individuals is included below.
Much of the correspondence that is not related to Henry B. Chew's claim relates to legal cases Samuel Chew was working on at the time he died. Most of these letters are from lawyers involved in the cases requesting documents from Benjamin III.
A significant portion of the correspondence in this subseries is from Samuel’s brothers, some of the most interesting being from Benjamin Chew III. Most of his letters center on land sales and issues with the management of various tracts of land and the tenants on those tracts. There are discussions of coal deposits and gold mining, and of attempts by the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal Commission to seize private property for canal construction. There are also hints of what would emerge as a divisive family dispute over Benjamin Chew Jr.'s estate. In a series of letters written in 1840-1841, Benjamin Chew III, upon hearing of his father's declining health, confides to Samuel his concerns about family members stealing their father's important papers. He cautions Samuel to keep the papers locked up in the event of a serious decline because "the vampires will flock round him under the pretence of rendering assistance..." (19 August 1841). In letters written in the months following his aunt Maria's death, Benjamin Chew III tells Samuel about the secret hiding places where she had kept copies of her will and other important documents. After the codicil of the will was found to be missing, he was convinced that his aunt Henrietta was responsible for its disappearance.
This subseries consists primarily of case files, but also includes records of legal fees, notes, correspondence, deeds, and leases. Archivists made every attempt to keep cases together during the arrangement process, but due to the way the papers were stored, much of the order that exists in this subseries was imposed during processing. Many of the cases in these files are interrelated.
This subseries contains many invoices from merchants for supplies related to the Kensington. These documents, along with an inventory of the ship that was prepared, provide a great deal of information about the types of goods and materials that went into the Kensington. The correspondence documents the legal and financial trouble that befell Samuel Chew. Most of the correspondents are either Mexican officials or merchants and suppliers attempting to collect payment. Related materials can be found in Series 5 and 7.
Before 1844, Henry's correspondence with these and other family members focuses on daily family life and business. Letters to and from his parents, his brother-in-law James Murray Mason, and later his son Samuel, relate information about family members' health, visits, daily life and business, and details about life in the farm at Epsom. He also discusses the slaves who work at Epsom and frequently mentions a quarry they were building. Slaves that he and his first wife Harriet inherited from General Charles Ridgely, Harriet's father, were the source of conflict; several slaves apparently claimed that General Ridgley intended in his will to give them more freedom than Ridgley’s legatees allowed them. In addition to his concerns at Epsom, Henry had an interest in iron production, which he discussed with his father.
Legal disputes involving William Luke, Henry's business partner in Luke [and] Chew in the 1820s, are the subject of his correspondence with his father and brother Samuel, who served as his legal counsel. Henry and his brother Samuel often discussed the ship Kensington (or Tepeyac), in which they both had a financial interest. Henry expected to receive a share in the profits Samuel anticipated from the sale of the ship, which proved difficult to sell. After Samuel's death in 1841, William Luke filed a claim against Henry for the amount he expected from the ship's sale. [See Series 5, Estate Administration and Series 6, Ship Kensington for more information about claims surrounding this ship.]
William White Chew and James Murray Mason often wrote to Henry about the family's land dealings in Pennsylvania. Both expressed concern for the family's finances and about the ability of the family's resources to continue to support their aging parents and their unmarried sister, Anne Sophia Penn Chew. Before Benjamin Jr.'s death, both William and James proposed selling some of the Pennsylvania lands to relieve financial strain on the family; they even traveled to some of the lands in person to assess the problem and look for solutions. Both of them also commented on potential trouble with Benjamin III even before Benjamin Jr.'s death. They believed that his administration of family lands business in western Pennsylvania was unsatisfactory and suggested removing him from the business or restricting his participation.
William wrote to Henry about politics, including his own work with some political figures and news he heard from his connections about the activity of others. He also corresponded with his brother about other family members' estates, especially their aunt Catherine Chew's, and continuing legal matters regarding Luke [and] Chew and the Bank of Pennsylvania v. Chew (see Series 4, Family Estates - Benjamin Chew, Jr.). Finally, William's letters provide insight into life at Cliveden. He reports on the state of their mother after Benjamin Jr.'s death and her interactions with Benjamin III, who he and the other executors considered a negative influence on Katherine. William also relates their brother Anthony's frequent drunken, carousing behavior with much disdain and news of their sister Anne and her interactions with family members during the conflict over their father's estate.
Henry's son Samuel's letters relate mainly to Benjamin Jr.'s estate, as he began to take over its management as his father aged. He was especially involved in administering the family's property throughout Pennsylvania and in Philadelphia. He corresponded with lands agents, tenants, and purchasers and relayed their transactions to his father. His letters include some descriptions of Philadelphia neighborhoods and the reasons property would or would not rent or sell in those locations. Samuel dealt with the continuation of some legal disputes from Benjamin Jr.'s estate, including Rawle, Chew, and Cadwalader (see Series 4, Family Estates - Benjamin Chew, Jr.). Samuel wrote to Henry of his concern for the family's finances, especially his aunt Anne's financial support, and his concerns over Anthony Banning Chew's drinking habits and sometimes crude behavior. He also wrote occasionally of his family and events in the community, such as the laying of passenger rail lines to Germantown in June 1859.
Henry's correspondence with his second wife Elizabeth, though limited, provides a glimpse of the deeply held and evidently emotional Christian faith that they shared. Henry's own lands business and that of his wife and her family is a prominent subject in his correspondence. Robert Ralston, Elizabeth (Ralston) Chew's father and Henry's father-in-law, owned a share in the "Charles Carroll" lands in Lycoming Co., Pennsylvania. After Robert Ralston's death, Elizabeth inherited a share of the lands. Henry navigated the legal process of settling Elizabeth's claim in the matter, corresponding frequently with Robert Ralston, Jr., an executor of the estate, and James Wilson, agent in Lycoming Co., Pennsylvania.
In the outgoing correspondence with index (Box 281), Henry discusses trading business. He shipped goods in a schooner he owned, called the Morgiana, commanded first by George A. Brewer then by Captain Charles H. Shankland. The Morgiana transported primarily flour, cornmeal, sugar, molasses, and coffee between mid-Atlantic, Caribbean, and sometimes European ports, particularly Gibraltar. These letters include commentary on the markets for certain goods, as well as politics and outbreaks of fever that could have an impact on shipping lanes.
Interestingly, despite Henry's and his family's travels between Maryland and Philadelphia, and their interests in the Union and the Confederacy, the Civil War is almost entirely absent from his diary and journal entries. In a cursory manner he noted a few key events, such as the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. In Philadelphia at the time, Henry noted that the city was in mourning and business ceased the morning of April 15, 1865.
The Memorial journal on the death of Harriet (Ridgely) Chew (1835-1837) consists of a forty-two page letter from Henry to his mother, lamenting his first wife's death, followed by dozens more pages devoted to poetry reflecting on Harriet's loss, as well as his daughter Priscilla's death in 1837. Most of the poetry appears to be Henry's, while he credited published sources for some extracts. His writings in this journal reflect deep grief for what was apparently a deeply loving relationship. Additionally, the journal contains several black and white drawings of various unidentified monuments and buildings.
Though William White Chew never married, it is clear from these letters that he had many admirers and became involved with numerous women. In 1820, he wrote to William B. Shepard, in uncharacteristic clarity, that a woman had claimed him to be the father of her child, and that he must borrow $300 to pay her off. In many other letters, Chew referred to "affairs" that caused him great pain and disgrace, though he generally failed to elaborate on the source of his problems. In 1828, he wrote to his brother Ben about a dispute with another man, and suggested that they had a duel to settle their conflict. He explained to Ben that he "had been long accused in offensive + irritating manner, of having put a lasting insult + injury upon him who has caused my present situation. The charge was as unfounded, as the injury supposed gross + damning. I, from the first, indignantly + in the most positive terms denied it. It was from time to time persisted in. My word was the only testimony. His secret + deeply rooted error of opinion (for I cannot doubt but it was believed in by him) the only foundation for the charge...[He] has returned to his senses + I trust that he will soon be returned to health" (April 1828).
Though Ben said nothing of William's behavior in writing, other family members scolded and pleaded with him to change his ways. His father suggested "that having recovered yourself from the agitation + excitement that ensued the trying Conflict, you accompany that recovery with a due observance of what is truly right and becoming together with a firm, fixed + unalterable determination to shake off and abjure every association of aberration of every sort from the incidents of which I must presume the late affair has arisen". (6th April 1828) Throughout the 1820s and early 1830s, his father wrote numerous letters advising William to avoid associations with people and activities that would harm his social standing. His sister Eliza expressed her disappointment at his flirtations with married women. It seems, for a time at least, that William attempted follow his family's advice, since he began to pursue a political career in the 1830s, finally serving as secretary to the U.S. legation in St. Petersburg, Russia under George M. Dallas. Because of their family's connections to George M. Dallas and James Murray Mason, letters from his family and friends express great interest in the political climate and give particular attention to party politics. Benjamin Chew Jr.'s letters to William White Chew are particularly rich in their documentation of political events, detailing debates over the Treasury Bill (1837), the outbreak of riots in Harrisburg (1838), and war with the Indian tribes in Florida (1839). Letters from this period in Chew's life document the daily activities and health of his family and friends, marriages and deaths in the family, opinions about political changes in the United States, and discussions of diplomatic affairs.
Upon his return to the United States from Russia, William White Chew moved to Washington D.C., and later stayed with his sister Eliza and James Murray Mason. He returned to Philadelphia between 1842 and 1843, and lived at Cliveden until 1845, when he was ordered to leave by his brother Ben because of a dispute over their father’s estate. Correspondence between William White Chew, Henry B. Chew and James Murray Mason focuses primarily on their roles as executors of the estate. Throughout the correspondence, there are discussions about selling land in Western Pennsylvania, and the need to liquidate property to pay off debts, though they are often thwarted in their efforts by Benjamin Chew III. During this time, Katherine B. Chew wrote to William White Chew frequently, alternately asking for money from her claim on the estate and chastising William for being a terrible son. She longed for her children to bury their differences so that her family and life at Cliveden would again be peaceful.
William White Chew never returned to live at Cliveden, moving between several rooming houses, and at some points living out of the family's office on 4th Street; nor did he settle into another occupation after his retirement from diplomacy. There is some suggestion in the letters that he was in bad health during the last years of his life. He died in November of 1851.
Though the majority of this subseries pertains to William White Chew’s work in Russia, there are several folders of documents and a few account books that provide evidence of his functions as Vice-Consul of Colombia in Philadelphia. There are reports of certificates he provided for shipping goods between Philadelphia and Colombia, as well as correspondence and certificates relating to the service of the Vice-Consul who preceded William White Chew.
In William White Chew's early journals, he attempted to lay out a plan for his life, pledging to "extend my field of action" into the world (1830). Some of these writings are extremely optimistic, imagining what is possible for a man of his social stature. Other entries relate a pessimistic sense about his chances for making his life what he wanted it to be due to the overwhelming debt he found himself carrying. During this time of pessimism, William White Chew expressed his dismay to his father, pleading for help in lifting him through such a dark time. His journals of this time also reveal what he calls his "sentiment" for his cousin Mary Bayard, and laments that their love will never come to fruition.
Most of his later journals (1837-1841) chronicle his travels and duties during his appointment in St. Petersburg, and after his return home, family strife at Cliveden (1843-1844). In St. Petersburg, he wrote about his daily activities--who he dined with, where he went, topics of conversation, and feelings he had about his new environment. He recounted conversations with other diplomats about American politics, slavery, and the development of a national bank in the United States. Chew described his close relationship with the Dallas family, with whom he spent a great deal of his time in Russia. After George Dallas requested to be recalled from the Legation to Russia, William's diaries reflect his unhappiness, anxieties, and the feeling that he must simply bide his time until he was either reappointed or sent back to the United States. He longed to return home from the beginning of his appointment in Russia, and, though he engaged in social activities with many people during his stay in St. Petersburg, William always maintained that his place is in the United States with his family. He had a rather fatalistic view of his appointment, constantly worrying that either he or his parents would die while he was away, and that he would never see his family again.
After his return to Germantown, his journals focus almost solely on family life at Cliveden. It was a tumultuous time for the Chew family, with Benjamin Chew Jr. suffering declining health, and Katherine Banning Chew becoming increasingly susceptible to the persuasion of her sons Anthony and Benjamin. William was extremely unhappy, writing about Anthony's intemperance, Anne's enabling of Anthony’s condition, his parents’ blindness to the seriousness of the situation, and Ben's mismanagement of the family's finances. William worried about the public disgrace to the family brought by Anthony's public drunkenness and daily visits to Germantown taverns. Throughout this time, he was also highly involved in the politics of the day, with a possibility of being nominated for a seat in the State Senate. He wrote about clashes he had with Ben because of their competing political ambitions, choosing to work toward the election of his friend George M. Dallas rather than concentrate on his own political career. He continued to keep notes and memos after 1844, but his formal journals trail off after his father's death, when he was consumed with the disputes that erupted in his family.
In addition to reporting family news, these letters document the numerous disputes and transactions involved in the administration of the estates of Benjamin Chew Jr., Anthony B. Chew, Maria Chew, Samuel Chew and William White Chew. A significant portion of the letters from Anne's brother Henry B. Chew deal with the administration of their father's estate and the management of lands throughout Pennsylvania. Throughout correspondence with her siblings, there are accounts of the difficult relationship with their mother after their fathers' death, discussions of the sale of lots around Cliveden, as well as reports from Anne on the continued maintenance of Cliveden itself. Anne wrote about the financial strain related to improvements and additions to the Cliveden property, especially after her nephew Samuel, his wife Mary and their children took up residence there.
While Anne seemed especially happy to have her favorite nephew and his family at Cliveden, there was ongoing friction between Anne and Mary. In a letter to Mary prior to her marriage to Samuel, Anne warned, "that it is not wise . . . to make him dissatisfied -- discontented -- with one who has his welfare + his happiness much at heart -- who has hitherto been to him, next to his own father, his nearest + dearest friend -- + the most considerate of his interests...If a distance is to be created between us...I shall deeply deplore it -- + pray Heaven that you may be able + willing to compensate him for what he loses in me" (January 15, 1861). By all appearances, Anne and Mary maintained a cordial-enough relationship to share a household and the affections of their beloved Sam and the couple's children, but beneath the surface, there were remnants of the difficulties between them.
In an 1868 letter to her sister Eliza, Anne acknowledged a sense of competition that developed between her and Mary: "Mary is not quite well. . . . The childrens sickness has confined her -- + she has a nurse who is difficult to get on with -- + yet is so competent in some respects that Mary dreads . . . losing her -- for Mary herself is incapable of enduring any fatigue or worriment with the children. . . . One of the silly creature's peculiarities is to be jealous of the children's fondness for me -- + consequently I am obliged to have as little to do with them as possible. Pleasant! is it not?" (April 24, 1868).
Throughout her letters, Anne's candor reveals her strong opinions, as well as her reluctance to fall into a demure, appeasing feminine role. Her correspondents frequently remarked upon these traits. In a letter from Anna M. Rush, in which she enclosed crumbs from Queen Victoria's wedding cake, Rush prefaced her enclosure with the following disclaimer: "I do not know that you will value any thing so trifling as Queen Victoria's wedding cake; but...I beg leave to enclose to you a portion of the crumbs that fell to my share, as a curiosity at least" (March 13, 1840).
Certainly, Anne seemed immune to blind adoration for prominent figures. This attitude is most clearly evidenced in her correspondence with James Murray Mason. In a series of letters written in December of 1860, Anne voiced her opinions about Mason's views and his work in the Senate. She chided, "Mr. Mason, I am ashamed of you -- for pity's sake -- if for no other sake, do not be so infatuated -- Deaf + blind indeed! -- Who could imagine that the South + you in particular could be so wantonly wicked + so foolish -- . . . Let me teach you one thing brother mine -- If South Carolina sees fit to extinguish herself by "going out" as you call it, she no more dissolves the Union than she would resolve the earth to Chaos -- . . . What will her first act of rebellion be? She, as it now appears, is to take the lead in the fatal step -- . . . + then perhaps the rest of the foolish Sisters will rise up in arms -- + take her part-- " (December 1, 1860).
While her next letter of December 4th calls into question whether she actually mailed the letter written on December 1, Anne was clearly troubled enough by a letter that Mason had sent her to pen a second response. She wrote about her concern that Sam not be exposed to Mason's objectionable views, and asked, "Are all the shining lights of our country gone out? Is there not one remaining to offer compromise -- . . . It seems to me that the North + South do not understand each other -- You assert that the election of Lincoln turned upon one issue -- Yet within a few days -- I have heard . . . men opposed to the attack upon slavery -- whose reason for voting for Lincoln hinged upon the tariff -- . . . I am afraid you have gone too far astray to retrace your steps -- but cant a door be opened for mediation -- compromise -- or a grain of common sense to enter?"
Despite her differences with the Mason family's politics, Anne maintained a tender respect for, and a lively correspondence with, her sister Eliza and her family. In 1869, Anne wrote a conciliatory letter to James Murray Mason, welcoming him back to Cliveden after the family's exile in Canada. She poked fun at politicians, and then remarked, "If you can stand it, I can -- + I would be very glad to see you again at Cliveden -- . . . though I cannot promise that you would be invited, as of old to the club suppers -- or be entertained, at the head quarters of the Union League -- But you can learn from me that it is no bad thing to sit + look at the cat all day . . . or doze by the fire -- At least one is out of mischief there --" (May 3, 1869).
Discussions of the Civil War are a major theme throughout this series of correspondence. Henry B. Chew wrote about the devastation in Maryland, and expressed his concerns about having a large wedding for Sam at such a depressed and volatile time in the country's history. Letters from Eliza M. Mason and her daughters Virginia (Jeannie) and Ida praised the Confederate Army's efforts, and detailed the roles the Mason sons played in the war, from the riots at Harper's Ferry to the first Battle of Manassas. James Murray Mason's sister "Teaco" and Mason's daughter Katherine C. Dorsey wrote about the effects of the war on their families and the region. In many of these letters, the authors expressed hatred for "the Yankees" and decried the tragedy that befell the Southern people. After the end of the Civil War, letters from the Mason family discussed their exile in Canada, described their "poverty" and lamented the distance from friends and loved ones. In many of the letters, the Masons asked Anne to visit them in Canada, but she responded with reluctance, citing monetary concerns as a barrier.
While national concerns are discussed throughout these letters, many significant insights can be gained from the deeply personal matters confided by Anne's correspondents. In letters from Anna Ambler, Eliza Blackford, and Salvadora George, they described the conditions of their marriages, concerns about getting married, and recounted marital disputes that arose with their spouses. Henry B. Chew wrote of his loneliness after the death of his first wife, and expressed feelings of pain and rejection in his relationship with their mother, Katherine Banning Chew. Henry's son Benjamin admitted his desire to have a wife to soothe his loneliness, but told Anne that "all my lady friends appear to give me the slip" (October 6, 1870).
Other letters are devoted to health and physical well-being, describing the effects of various illnesses and the deaths that often resulted. Anna Ambler wrote to Anne about her servant Mary, who was suffering from Typhoid fever, and attributed the severity of her illness to "the nature of negroes." (February 3, 1853) Henry B. Chew detailed an array of health problems, including a tumor over his heart. Mary Johnson Brown Chew's letters are filled with reports about Sam's health, as well as descriptions of the various illnesses that their children develop. Mary recounted the death of their servant Eliza and provided details about how her body was treated and laid out (April 1881). Samuel Chew described his own health problems, his son David's foot operation, the effects of vaccination, Mary's illness after childbirth (1 May 1871), and the diseases and deaths of various family members. William White Chew discussed his "confinement" due to illness and his shame about how his prolonged sickness affected his appearance. Katherine Dorsey expressed her fears about Ida Mason's health after she had a lump in her breast that went untreated for years. Letters from Ida and Virginia Mason discuss their mother Eliza's ever-worsening condition.
Health is a major theme in almost all of the correspondence in this series, and there are often details about treatments included in the letters. These descriptions offer an intimate perspective of nineteenth century concepts of illness and mortality, and provide insights into the depth of feeling shared in the Chews' family relationships. Anne's friends and relatives were expressive with her, writing about their hopes and fears, financial woes, love for their children, and, often, a fervent desire to see Anne and hear from her more often. This correspondence paints a portrait of a woman deeply devoted to her family and friends, though sometimes distant. In numerous letters, her friends Mary E. Hart and Margaretta Sergeant refer to Anne's difficult and melancholy life, and offer praise for her service to her family, and their hopes that her suffering will end.
The pocket diaries record money paid or collected throughout the year, often with brief notes about seeing a particular individual on the day a payment was made. Many of these transactions relate to rent (collected or paid) and wages paid to workers. In other cases, there are notes about stocks purchased or held, payments from various family estates, and occasionally purchases of goods made on that day.
While many of the bills and receipts in this subseries were loose, and therefore sorted by the individual to whom the payment for goods and services was made, the two receipt books contain a similar array of account types, with the receipts glued to the books' pages.
The Civil War is mentioned in relationship to personal events; especially interesting are letters from Henry B. Chew regarding Samuel Chew's marriage in 1861. These letters provide Samuel with guidelines regarding the scale of the event, advising that "we shall be compelled to forego much that at any other time under other or former abilities would certainly have led me to provide for the occasion--my wife's sad condition + the deplorable situation of our country, and the financial crisis paralyzing everything + preventing my collecting one cent of money owing to me--all conspire to prevent our indulging the joyous merrymaking otherways would occur... " (June 3, 1861). In a letter later that week, Henry B. Chew reports that Samuel's brother Charles will not be able to attend the wedding, explaining "that it would be almost impossible under all existing circumstances for him to leave home even for a single day as it would be very wrong to leave the house + family + farm without one white man present in case anything should happen here in the absence of all the male members of the family... " (June 6, 1861).
In other letters from 1861, Henry B. Chew reports that Maryland's secession from the Union seems likely and that allegiance to the Confederacy is being enforced. He writes that "[t]he whole state of Maryland appears united in determination for secession to join the Southern Confederacy, and the flag of the Union with the Stars [and] Stripes is not allowed to be displayed any where. It is to be substituted by Either the flag of the Southern Confederacy, or that bearing the Arms of the State of Maryland every where--not a man is allowed to express an opinion or evince, any sympathy, contrary to that proclaimed for the secession [and] battle for Southern rights!! ... The plain fact is that Baltimore [and] its vicinity are now under Military Mob Law--..." (April 25, 1861). Though Henry B. Chew frequently expressed his allegiance to the Union and his desire to return to Pennsylvania, he remained in Maryland because of his wife's ill health and financial difficulties. His letters from 1863-1865 express fears about his sons being drafted into military service, describe the movement of troops in the area and reflect the impact of the war on the lives of Southerners.
In addition to letters from his father, correspondence from Eliza and James Murray Mason, and their daughters Ida and Virginia describe the conditions in the South. There are discussions of the riots at Harper's Ferry, the trial of John Brown, the exile of the Mason family in Canada during the 1860s, and the poverty that affected the South after the end of the war. In one letter, Ida O. Mason describes the state of affairs at their house prior to the execution of John Brown: "We have been having excited times here too--There was a rumor, that poor "old Brown," was certainly to be rescued, + that part of the plan was to kidnap Pa, + hold him as a hostage. But the report gained credence + the whole Town was under a Patrol + an especial Guard appointed....I can truly say, we were never in the least afraid of any personal harm, tho' our friends confidently expected Pa to be taken , + our barn to be burnt" (December 9, 1859).
James Murray Mason's letters do not address this family crisis, nor does he mention his role in John Brown's case. He discusses the events at Harper's Ferry in one letter (18 October 1859), but the majority of his letters relate to his role as executor in the estate of Benjamin Chew Jr. Finally, on April 15, 1861 Mason declares "...War is begun. When or how to end is beyond the ken or the control of man. One thing is certain. The Slave States will never again come under a common government with the Free States unless under a Constitution modified in the form adopted by the Confederate States, + not then, if the President carries out the programme of his Proclamation of this morning".
James Murray Mason continued in political office until the end of the Civil War, and then he and his family moved to Canada, where they found themselves isolated and struggling with the change in their social position. Eliza Murray Mason writes from Niagara, "'Poverty is indeed a weary thing' + I am sometimes shocked, when I find myself attaching so much more importance to Pounds, Shillings + pence than in former days....I have a horror of becoming mercenary. Yet a few more years of Exile, may possibly change my whole nature. You say, that 'you believe a brighter day is about to dawn,' but my dear Nephew, ... I cannot see in the present deplorable condition of political affairs anything to cheer or comfort our Southern hearts. Ruin--irremediable ruin seems the inevitable result of the military despotism to which the South is now subjected" (December 17, 1867).
While shedding light on significant national events, Samuel Chew's correspondence also creates a portrait of his intimate family relationships. Letters between Samuel Chew and Mary Johnson Brown Chew reveal a deep bond and mutual respect between husband and wife. Mary's correspondence also reflects the development of their relationship while they were courting. There are a significant number of letters from his children while they were in boarding school or traveling. David S. B. Chew and Samuel Chew Jr. offer entertaining anecdotes and express affection and respect for their father, creating a sense of the tight bonds that cemented this young family.
Anne Sophia Penn Chew writes to Samuel frequently, expressing her love and devotion to him, as well as inquiring about land sales and division of assets in the estate of Benjamin Chew Jr. In her earlier letters, she asks about his social life, prospects for marriage, and his plans for the future. Though she very seldom talks about the politics of the day, a letter from January 23, 1865 expresses her general sense of uneasiness: "Many events have occurred of late calculated to make us contemplative [and] careful--and the times [and] the state of the country are indeed calculated to render us anxious...it seems impossible to know what to count upon--or how much of the rumors of the day to credit--...." Later letters remind him to take care of his health and discuss the state of things at Cliveden, quite often mentioning Samuel's children, who were frequent visitors there. In one letter, she describes a remarkable event at home: "...I was aroused by Ben, who informed me that Mr. Ward [and] John Dorsey were down stairs--they have not been here very lately. After 2pm I heard a curious rumbling shaking noise--as if a tremendously heavy carriage or wagon was driving up--over an awfully rough road--+ I went to Ben's window to look out ...But--no carriage or omnibus was there--...And after I went down Ward said it was an earthquake--that the shaking lasted for many seconds [and] things rattled. And Jane rushed out of the nursery to know what shook the windows--Ward said he thought it was time to get out of the house--And they all think it was really an earthquake--" (August 10, 1884).
Cliveden was a gathering place for friends and family. Most of the correspondents in this series express their desire to visit the family at Cliveden or recount news of visits while Samuel Chew is away. Especially noteworthy are the letters of John H. Carr and A.B. Weimer. Weimer writes about traveling with Samuel's sons and reports news about friends and acquaintances.
Notable correspondence about the estate of Benjamin Chew Jr. includes that of Samuel's brother Benjamin, Henry B. Chew, James Murray Mason, and Edward Hoops. James M. Mason Jr. and John Mason write to Samuel about their farms, in which Samuel appears to have a financial interest. Samuel Chew's letter books contain correspondence related primarily to financial matters--payments, responses to requests for financial assistance from friends and business associates, matters relating to the settlement of various estates, and business matters, including the management of his farm in Maryland.
This subseries contains appointments and papers related to Samuel Chew's work as Commissioner of Deeds, agreements, accounts and notes related to David S. Brown and Co., deeds and leases, law licenses, legal papers, and materials related to the Great Central and Plymouth Rock Oil Companies.
Letters from Mary's sister Martha M. Brown primarily detail her travels throughout Europe with several of Mary's children and Samuel Chew in 1881. They visited Milan, Geneva, Vienna, Heidelberg, Paris, and London, among other cities and towns. She writes in a highly descriptive style, detailing their activities and the sights that they take in as they move from place to place. In contrast to Martha's worldly letters, Anne Sophia Penn Chew writes to Mary about the details of running the household at Cliveden, including assessments of various servants, discussions about modernizing the house to meet Mary's needs, and advice about planting the garden and pasturing the cows. Anne also offers thoughts on childrearing and reports on the children's activities and behavior when they are staying at Cliveden. Mary's children write to her during their travels around the world, describing their experiences and impressions of new places. One notable letter from her son Benjamin offers details about his trip through Jamaica, and includes photographs from the construction of the Panama Canal.
Of all of Mary's correspondents, her daughter Anne and her son Sam are the most prolific. Anne’s marriage to Vere Speke Alston provided her with many opportunities to travel, though most of her letters originate from the couple’s homes in Weymouth, UK and Cairo, Egypt. She writes about her daily life and her travels, offers reports about her and Vere’s health, and discusses visits from friends and family. Many of Anne’s later letters discuss the First World War, and some letters show evidence of having been censored. In addition to discussing the effects of the war on her own life, Anne writes to her mother about Oswald, his wife Ada, and Sam’s volunteer work in France, relaying information about their whereabouts and activities.
Most of Sam’s letters reference his academic progress at St. Paul's School and, later, Harvard, often providing apologies for his poor grades, and pleas for more money to pay the expenses incurred for his provisions, club memberships, and recreational activities. Some of his letters also discuss the family's interest in the Gloucester manufacturing companies that were derivatives of David S. Brown and Co. His easy-going nature and sense of humor come through in the letters, in which he placates his mother's concerns about his behavior with transparent excuses for his performance in school. Throughout his correspondence, he assures Mary that he is not drinking or staying out late. In one letter, he side-steps her accusations by saying "What made you think Jack Mitchell + I had been drinking upstairs—if it was that bottle of whiskey, you may set your mind at rest,—Charlie Wood left that one day by accident,—he had just come up from the seashore, and that was whiskey to rub him down with after bathing, so dear Mamma if you or anyone has been using it for any other purpose—such as drinking you may expect to die at any moment" (September 30, 1890).
Another entertaining letter comes from Nannie Grason during a trip through Switzerland and Germany in 1875. She writes about sight-seeing, describes her difficulties with the German language, and repeatedly mentions her visits to beer gardens. She tells Mary that she is so enamored with them that she has been contemplating starting one in Philadelphia. She quips that either 1716 Walnut Street or Cliveden would be a perfect location for such a venture.
Correspondence from Katherine C. Dorsey focuses primarily on her financial situation, and often includes requests for assistance to augment her income. She encloses advertisements offering rooms for rent to members of Congress and other boarders, and to collect orders for canned fruits, preserves, and pickled vegetables. She describes her domestic projects, including knitting and crochet, which serve as potential income sources. Many of her letters reference her inheritance from various family estates and discussions on sales of lots around Cliveden. Letters from Ida and Virginia Mason include similar discussions of finances and their ongoing poverty. Ida offers Mary a glimpse of the way that poverty has impacted her, and laments her sometimes-poor judgment with the following example: “If ever you ‘have boarders,’ you will know that one of the features of the disease is an abiding dread, worse than any night-mare, that they won't have enough to eat. When this horror seizes me, I have all the chickens killed that can possibly be caught, + then when dinner is over, am shocked at my bad management in having too much--a very bad fault in a house-keeper, who has boarders” (Clarens, August 4th [undated]).
Her journal of 1861 begins in a similar manner, recounting an interaction with Anne Sophia Penn Chew, which left her feeling hurt. Beginning on April 13th, however, Mary's entries move quickly to a focus on national events; she describes the first conflicts in the Civil War, and expresses the fear and uncertainty that must have gripped the entire country in April 1861. She writes, "So War is indeed in our borders! and we know not how rapidly the hydra headed monster may advance and how soon desolation may be near our own homes!" Later in the month, she describes the situation in Maryland, "Now not a flag of the stars and stripes is visible, Not a Union man dares to Stir-no one Can pass thro' the city unless under Cover of a Secession badge!" (April 25th). Her entry on April 30th ends with the following reflection: "Have been several times to the House of Employment where ladies are collected making clothes for the soldiers- scraping lint making bandages +c +c. How fully these preparations bring the reality before us”.
Mary's reports about the Civil War take a more personal perspective in her May 1st entry. She recounts newspaper coverage that James M. Mason had been visiting Cliveden, which aroused a public cry for his arrest. The authorities were not able to locate Senator Mason in Germantown, and Mary suggests that this story had been fabricated "by Mr. B.C. [Benjamin Chew III] in order to annoy and if possible cause inconvenience to those against whom he holds such inveterate hatred." In this same entry, she notes a shift in her relations with Anne Sophia Penn Chew after a visit to Cliveden. "I spent last Sat. afternoon at Cliveden- very pleasantly- ... It was very lovely- green + Spring-like + I find that I now meet its mistress without trembling .... It is not that I have forgotten the past or recognize the injustice any less- But that I feel myself too erring to judge another, too human to find fault..."(May 1st). The last entry in Mary's 1861 journal looks toward her new role as Samuel Chew's wife with apprehension. "My thoughts are absorbed now by the rapid approach of the greatest event of my life. The day for my marriage is fixed, and a few days will make it the present. ... But oh what a stand point is this which my life has now reached, looking back into girlhood on one side and on the other, on into an unknown future-" (June 12th).
Mary's journal from 1886-1887, records a different kind of uncertainty—that of the loss of her husband. This short chronicle begins in December of 1886, when it is clear that Samuel Chew is critically ill. She writes about their last Christmas together, reflecting on the joys and sorrows of each day, and details Samuel's swift decline. By January 10, 1887, Samuel is dead and Mary faces a "desolate" future. On January 13, the day of his internment at Saint Luke's Church in Germantown, Mary writes "This day our precious one was laid in his last resting place... + I look forward to the dreary years when I must meet all the anxieties + perplexities of life Alone--without his living hand to lead me--but I remember there is another Hand which will guide me if only groping in the darkness and the gloom I can find it--" Her journal from 1894 describes her daily activities, offers some reflection of her thoughts and feelings, and lists her expenditures for the year.
Mary's pocket diaries offer a record of her activities over a broad span of years, prior to her marriage through a few years after Samuel's death. A typical entry from her 1862 diary reads: "Went to town. pd 2 visits did some shopping + went to see Grandmama. 27 cts in RR + P cars- Sent 50 cts to S" (February 21, 1862). Other entries sum up her activities in a narrative form: "At home Bessy playing tricks all day long- David very full of fun." (April 1, 1881) and record events of national significance: "The President died last night." (September 19, 1881). Some of her diary entries list the clothing and household items she purchased, along with their cost. On July 17th, 1862, Mary's purchases included a "Barege dress $4.50, Ruffle to edge neck of dress 50cts., Corsets $1.16." These lists, along with more substantive entries about her daily activities and travels, provide a rough picture of what Mary valued and reflect how she and Samuel Chew spent their money and time.
Samuel Chew acted on behalf of Mary J.B. Chew in transactions with parties wishing to sell the family lots around Cliveden. After Samuel Chew's death, David S.B. Chew and his brothers handled some of the real estate transfers for Mary J.B. Chew and Martha M. Brown. David S.B. Chew provided regular financial reports to his mother and Aunt Martha regarding all of the family’s real estate holdings; some of these reports are included here, others can be found in series 24 (Chew Estate Office). The materials related to Cold Spring Farm were removed from a scrapbook Mary kept that documented the operation of the farm from 1887-1889. Robert E. Lee de Potestad operated the farm for the Chew family, and corresponded frequently with Mary about expenses and transactions that he handled.
Nine folders of tax bills relate to Cliveden and properties in Philadelphia and Radnor. These receipts were removed from a scrapbook where they were pasted chronologically.
Letters from Martha's friends Sophy G. Coxe, and Lilly Wistar make up the bulk of correspondence from those outside of Martha's family. The two write detailed letters about their personal lives and events of broader significance. Sophy G. Coxe's letters, written mostly from her home in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, offer a perspective on life in one of the state's coal-mining regions, with descriptions of several mine collapses and explosions, and provide a sometimes-philosophical view of the social questions of the day. In one letter, Sophy Coxe writes, "I am beginning to take a rather gloomy view of the labor question, I confess, and often find myself wondering whether I shall live to see communism introduced into this country." (April 14, 1872) In another letter, she describes a trip to Cuba, where she visits a sugar plantation and observes slaves working on a chain gang [undated]. Lilly Wistar's letters from the early 1860s focus on the impact of the Civil War on her family and the country as a whole, especially as her brother rejoins his regiment and is injured in battle. Other friends wrote more sporadically, but their letters offer a wider view of Martha’s social circle, which included Sylvia (Watson) Emerson and her husband William Ralph Emerson, who designed several of the Brown family homes in Radnor.
Samuel Chew (1871-1919) was the son of Mary Johnson Brown and Samuel Chew. He attended St. Paul’s and Harvard and, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, operated a private practice and served as Assistant City Solicitor of Philadelphia.
This series contains fifteen boxes and nineteen volumes. Among the significant groups of materials are accounts, business papers, correspondence, legal documents, and papers related to real estate properties. There are also broadsides related to the 1893 elections and to properties in Germantown, and journals, diaries and personal logs. In the accounts group there are bills, receipts, balance sheets, and financial documents related to Samuel Chew’s finances and to the estate of David Sands Brown. Other papers offer insights into Samuel Chew’s financial matters. In folders titled “Property Taxes”, “Properties” (909 Market Street and 1311 Walnut Street), and “Business and personal papers”, researchers will find information on Samuel Chew’s investments and business ventures, as well as his work as a corporate lawyer and administrator of the family’s assets and Cliveden.
Most of the early correspondence consists of letters from family members and friends to Samuel Chew, while he was attending school in Concorde, New Hampshire and Harvard University. After his school years Samuel Chew’s correspondence deals almost exclusively with business matters and issues related to the estate of the Chew family. Most of these letters are from his mother Mary Johnson Brown, his aunt Martha Morris Brown, and his brother David Sands Brown Chew. Other correspondence refers to Samuel Chew’s efforts to procure military service during the First World War. Letters in this section are addressed to different branches of the military. In 1917, Chew wrote to Theodore Roosevelt to express his interest in joining one of Roosevelt’s military expeditions. Other interesting letters are those written by Austen Riggs regarding Samuel Chew’s psychological treatment sessions in Massachusetts. (Riggs eventually became the founder of the Austen Riggs Center of Intensive Psychotherapy).
Samuel Chew owned several properties around Philadelphia and there are related deeds, mortgages, bonds, accounts of rents collected, tax reports, receipts for repairs, correspondence, surveys, and other miscellaneous papers. From his work as Assistant City Solicitor of Philadelphia and court-appointed legal master for various legal cases there are copies of transcripts, briefs, interrogatories, and other legal documents related to divorce and bankruptcy cases. Also included are files about a murder case (Commonwealth vs. William Epps) in which Samuel Chew was the solicitor in charge of presenting evidence to the Board of Pardons seeking to commute Epps’ penalty from death to life in prison. The documents related to political matters deal exclusively with Chew’s involvement in the Republican Party and the Penrose Republican Club.
Rounding out this series are miscellaneous materials that include school reports, university diplomas, train tickets, newspaper clippings, obituaries, and interestingly, several letters “authored” by a deceased Samuel Chew through a medium.
This series consists of twelve boxes and sixty-two volumes that offer insights into David Sands Brown’s business conglomerate in Camden County, New Jersey. Brown served as director of Girard Bank from 1840-1843, and in 1844 he built and was president and manager of the Washington Manufacturing Company in Gloucester, New Jersey, which manufactured cotton. Washington Mills, owned by the Washington Manufacturing Company, contained both mills and boarding houses for single workers. Following this he established the Gloucester Manufacturing Company for the production of printed calicoes and in 1859 built the Gloucester Gingham Mills. Five years later he established, and became president of, the Gloucester Iron Works. Other companies David S. Brown established include the Gloucester Print Works, Gloucester Land Company, and in 1871 the Ancona Printing Company, which introduced new methods of applying colors which had been successful in Europe but previously untried in the United States.
Documents in this series include bills, receipts, bonds, agreements, correspondence, papers related to legal cases where David S. Brown was involved, and papers concerning the numerous properties owned by David S. Brown, including multiple documents about a storehouse located between Delaware Avenue and Chestnut Street.
The accounts consist primarily of bills and receipts for repairs and services rendered at the companies. There are also balance sheets, financial statements and financial analyses of some of the companies, and documents related to David S. Brown’s stock investments. Accounts of employee’s wages, pipe and boiler construction expenses, and cost of machinery can also be found in this section. Sands Brown also lent money for profit and that is reflected in the numerous folders with promissory notes, bonds, and agreements offering a detailed description of this.
Business papers comprise an important part of this series since they detail the inner workings of corporate administration and contain notes on investments made by David Sands Brown. There are fabric samples, inventories, price lists, promotional printed materials, statements to creditors, papers related to railroad construction, and insurance policies. There are also many volumes that help thoroughly document Brown’s companies, such as ledgers, receipt books, cashbooks, letter books, journals, and minutes of stockholders meetings. There are also daybooks from the Washington Manufacturing Company, Washington Mills, Gloucester Manufacturing Company, Gloucester Gingham Mills, Gloucester Iron Works, Gloucester Land Company and Ancona Printing Company.
Most of Brown’s correspondence is business-related. In addition to information on the day-to-day operations of his companies, some of the correspondence highlights real estate and mortgage investments Brown held with W. J. Barney (of the Western Mortgage Company) in Iowa. There are also letters that refer to real estate investments made by Martha Morris Brown and Mary Johnson Brown with funds from the Davis Sands Brown estate. Samuel Chew’s correspondence deals with the administration of the Brown’s estate, of which Chew was the executor.
The deeds, mortgages, leases and releases in this series trace back the legal standing of properties and real estate connected to Brown’s companies. Folders titled “Estate” contain papers produced after Brown’s death that describe the status of his assets; most of these papers are authored by Samuel Chew, executor of the estate. There are also papers related to disputes and settlements involving Brown’s companies. Papers filed under “Properties” cover most of his assets including the Camden, Gloucester and Mt. Ephraim Railway Company (in part responsible for the design and construction of the train tracks that would help move his production from the Gloucester factories sites to the Delaware River wharves) and his storehouse located on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware River. Also included are documents related to Brown’s properties Gloucester, North Penn Township (part of what today is known as Northern Liberties), Iowa, and Cook County, in Illinois.
Surveys of Gloucester City and ground plans for Brown’s factories give a broad picture of the industrial development of Gloucester, New Jersey, in no small part achieved by Brown’s entrepreneurship. However, under the “Maps and plans” section are maps that Brown may have personally collected. This series also features personal papers related to Brown’s membership in different Philadelphia civic organizations like the Union League, Library Company, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; and miscellaneous documents ranging from newspapers clippings, business cards, train tickets, and poems and songs parodying Brown’s companies.
This series is just a small part of the David S. Brown and Co. documents held by The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. More detailed records may be found in manuscript collection 1586, David S. Brown and Co. records, 1828-1910.
Among the non-family members is an interesting selection of letters signed by an individual using the initials “C. K. B,” who apparently was quite fond of Elizabeth. “Will you ever come to know how really precious you are to me?” he asked in a letter dated November 25, 1892. Beyond his professions of love, this gentleman seemed to be well-versed in Philadelphia’s societal and political happenings. In these few letters he offered keen insights into several current events of the late 1800s, including the 118th anniversary of Philadelphia First Troop, which he attended, and the 1892 presidential election. On 3 May 1893, he discussed Boies Penrose’s possible run for mayor of Philadelphia.” Boies is talked of as the next mayor of Philadelphia,” he noted, “but there are many others who are ambitious in this direction too, + as the nomination is a long ways off yet, many changes make[sic] take place in the shuffling of the political cards".
Researchers will find several letters from various individuals that date from Elizabeth’s time in London around 1913. Groups of letters from family and friends have been accordingly filed under those individuals. Single letters have been arranged together and filed as “miscellaneous [letters] to EBC in London".
Beyond this small group of materials, this subseries also contains a folder of family letters, a mostly empty Radnor Realty stock certificate book, and Oswald Chew’s Croix de Guerre award for his service to France during World War I.
Following these papers are two folders of material from the Towson National Bank (Maryland). The Towson account was apparently passed down through several family members (including Mary J. B. Chew, David Sands Brown Chew, and Anne Sophia Penn Chew Alston) until it was overseen by Oswald as the acting family agent. There is one folder of account statements and miscellaneous financial papers, as well as a checkbook.
The final group of materials consists of papers pertaining to the Samuel Chew estate. Most of the material is financial in nature and primarily documents the estate’s assets and expenditures during the 1920s and the early 1940s. There is also a small selection of mostly legal and financial correspondence, inventories of the estate, various administrative documents conceding the distribution of the estate, and copies of Samuel Chew’s will. In addition, there are typed notes from the diary of David S. B. Chew from October 1927 to February 1928, which were probably garnered because they contained information on the estate, including financial transactions and land interests. Related materials can be found in series 24, Chew Estate Office.
David Sands Brown Chew was the eldest son of Mary Johnson Brown and Samuel Chew. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Chew established his own private practice in Philadelphia, where he became involved in city politics. He was a member of the First Troop of Philadelphia City Cavalry, and a long time member of the Pennsylvania National Guard.
This series consists of three boxes and fifteen volumes and primarily covers three aspects of David Sands Brown Chew’s life: business interests, life in the military, and political involvement with the Republican Party in Philadelphia. A smaller group of materials document David’s personal life, which include journals, genealogical research, school papers, scrapbooks, printed materials, and newspaper clippings.
The accounts records contain documents related to David Sands Brown Chew’s involvement with some of his grandfather’s companies (Gloucester Iron Works, Ancona Printing, and Gingham Mills). David’s business papers pertain to Radnor Realty, a real estate company he ran out of the Commercial Trust Building in Philadelphia. Papers related to his interests in the development of the Delaware River wharves can be found in Box 645, Folder 5 (Business papers-dredging). The majority of his papers related to business matters are in the volumes, which include journals, minutes, record books, transfer books, checkbooks, stock reports, and ledgers related to the Radnor Realty Company.
Correspondence during the years 1870 to 1889 is mostly between David Sands Brown Chew and family members (his mother Mary Johnson Brown, sister Anne Sophia Penn Chew, and brother Samuel Chew). Letters from years 1890 to 1899 describe business matters and issues related to the Chew estate.
The military files depict in detail various duties performed by Major Chew while serving as ordinance officer, chairman of military transportation, quartermaster, and acting inspector of rifle practice (First Brigade, National Guard, Philadelphia). The political files contain documents related to David Sands Brown Chew’s political activism; materials in this group document his membership in Philadelphia’s 8th Ward Republican Party and his role as financial officer for Republican senator Boies Penrose. There are also letters related to his service as both a councilman for the city of Philadelphia and as a member of the State House of Representatives in Harrisburg.
Pocket diaries from years 1857 to 1884 contain notes and appointments, both business and personal. Some folders house memos, notes, and maps concerning real estate ventures in Chicago, and investments with an iron and coal company in Ohio. The accounts section contains documents about personal expenses (shoes, wine, etc), receipts, and statements related to taxes in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Germantown Township; and papers with details about bank accounts and stock matters. Most of the correspondence is either between Benjamin Chew of Epsom and agents for the Chew estate, or with Chew family members. The volumes in this subseries consist of journals and diaries with detailed entries about business affairs and personal appointments.
Among the papers not related to business matters, there is a folder with documents related to Freemasonry, including rules and bylaws, and a registry of lodges in the state of Pennsylvania.
Documents housed under the title A.J. Drexel Cup Tournament reflect Benjamin Chew’s work as treasurer for a group of golf enthusiasts sponsoring a tournament to raise funds for a new golf course called Gulph Mills in King of Prussia. The account portion of the subseries contain bills and receipts for personal expenses, and documents related to accounts of Chew family members including papers related to the estate of Elizabeth Brown Chew. Benjamin Chew Jr. also kept financial records pertaining to the estate of Mary J. B. Chew and Martha M. Brown and the estates of Anne Chew, Arthur R. Spencer, and Caroline B. Thompson. The remaining accounts-related documents deal with tax matters and stock investments (Girard Trust Company, Hooper’s Bay Ltd., Gloucester Land Co., Boulder Mine Company, and Somat Corporation).
Benjamin Chew’s personal papers are related to Cliveden, subjects of interest to the Chew family, and his life in the military. His correspondence consists mostly of interchanges with parties interested in visiting Cliveden, researchers wanting access to papers housed in the mansion, or inquiries about the possibility of acquiring the collection. Other papers of particular interest are notes about genealogical research, biographical notes on various family members, papers related to Cliveden furniture and coaches, newspaper clippings, inventories of books, documents about Richard Allen, the Mischianza, and notes and drafts of speeches about Cliveden. Also housed in this subseries are printed documents of the Civil Defense produced by the United States Government Printing Office.
The greater part of the incoming correspondence is from family members; however there are letters from friends such as Margaretta Sergeant. Most of the letters convey news about her family (their health and activities) and news about mutual friends and neighbors. The letters include warm expressions of affection and expressions of anxiety about Chew family illnesses and sympathy for the deaths of Chew family members. The remaining incoming letters are from members of societies, merchants, servants, and lawyers; there are also invitations and responses to invitations, letters of sympathy, requests for settlement of bills, reports on friends’ health, etc. Outgoing correspondence is scant and routine, except for pleas to officials seeking to stop them from taking two of her sons into custody for unpaid debts. In 1845 and again in 1847, Katherine Banning Chew sent notes to a Mr. Ash asking that he take her security for payment of her sons’ debts and requesting his assurances that they will not be arrested. The estate portion of this subseries contains letters to her children (most notably to Eliza, William, and Henry). Most of these are undated and are highly emotional, emphasizing her distress and her position as an aggrieved widow and mother. There are also several drafts and copies of letters to her grandchildren, and to her solicitors.
Anthony B. Chew's correspondence begins in 1829, when he set off to start working on what would later be known as the Horseshoe Farm. The farm was located in Butler County and built under the supervision of Anthony and Benjamin Chew III, with assistance from their father Benjamin Chew Jr.
Anthony’s letters revolved around business affairs concerning Horseshoe Farm and the people under his charge. Letters with Benjamin Chew III are related to the building and upkeep of Horseshoe Farm and management of their property in Butler and Beaver counties. Anthony had been granted Power of Attorney over Butler and Beaver Counties by Benjamin Chew Jr., and had worked as an agent for his father. Benjamin Chew III felt that Anthony had been mismanaging the land and took over the management of the counties. For most of Anthony's adult life he lived in Pittsburgh and Butler County, but traveled to Baltimore, Cincinnati and New Orleans, among other places. Much to his father's disappointment he fell into debt, and relied heavily on Benjamin Chew Jr. to give him money to pay off creditors. Anthony was also a known alcoholic. Letters from his father are filled with advice and concern, as well as disappointment and anxiety over Anthony's life choices. In letters to his father, Anthony often asked for advice or money.
Materials files under Essays, School Notes and Writings include poetry and essays written by Anthony B. Chew as well as detailed class notes, diagrams, and textbooks from his time at the University of Pennsylvania. Papers included in the Legal section are land papers, court summonses, and a rough draft of Anthony B. Chew’s Will.
The bulk of the subseries consists of letters received from Benjamin Chew and Benjamin Chew Jr., spanning a period from 1783 to Chew’s death in 1807. The communications cover a wide range of topics; from personal and family matters, to health issues, as well as business dealings. In one dispatch, Benjamin Chew discusses a fever epidemic and the practice of bleeding advocated by Dr. Benjamin Rush. Of particular note are the numerous observations offered by Benjamin Chew Jr. into the national and international politics of the time. These references are often made with regard to how events might affect the price of wheat.
Joseph T. Chew’s accounts, which were mainly made up of receipts, show his increasing debt to various people, including Christian Buhl. Most of the receipts are for everyday items such as tea, tobacco, bacon, oats, flour, etc. Others are for a rented horse and gig, postage, books, and boarding. Christian Buhl, introduced to Joseph through his father Benjamin Chew Jr., oversaw many orders and accounts dealing with the everyday items. There are a group of receipts for military items, including uniform parts, supplies, and weapons. These items are from his time in the Pennsylvania Artillery and the Hundred Forty-First Regiment (1828-1829). There are also other documents and correspondence associated with Joseph T. Chew’s military experience.
The majority of the documents in this subseries are related to Cliveden and organizations in the Germantown neighborhood around the mansion. Samuel Chew and his wife Barbara renewed Cliveden and entertained visitors and groups interested in seeing the house; Chew also owned an advertisement agency and converted Cliveden’s stable into his office. Items in this subseries include copies of articles on Cliveden published by various magazines (Antiques, Vogue, Interior Design, and National Geographic) as well as correspondence between Samuel Chew and different organizations interested in the mansion (Germantown Academy, Germantown Historical Society, The Philadelphia Museum, and Radcliff College). Of particular interest is the correspondence between Samuel Chew and the U.S. Department of Interior’s National Park Service regarding the transfer of Cliveden to that government agency. A folder with thank-you letters from Cliveden visitors and a guestbook are also part of this subseries.
This subseries consists mainly of agreements, correspondence, and wills related to the union between Harriet Chew and Charles Carroll Jr., with documents describing the courtship and family life of the couple, as well as their eventual marital split. Items of particular note include a sequence of communications between Benjamin Chew and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, stipulating the terms on which each would consent to the wished-for “arrangement” between their respective children.
Also of interest is a group of letters documenting the case of Charity Castle (Box 691, ff. 7). This case involved the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery of 1780, which granted freedom to any slave brought into Pennsylvania and retained there for six months. Castle, a slave who Harriet Chew Carroll brought with her to Philadelphia when she separated from her husband, claimed her freedom after spending more than six months in Pennsylvania. Documentation includes a letter between Benjamin Chew Jr. and Charles Carroll of Carrollton describing Castle’s reluctance to return to Homewood and another communication explaining that she could not be taken out of the state due to a severe accident. Among the remaining contents is a deposition attesting to the circumstances of the case, a doctor’s opinion advising against moving the injured woman, and legal opinions submitted on the part of lawyers William Lewis and William Rawle. Additional material related to this case may be found in the correspondence between Benjamin Chew Jr. and the Carrolls in Series 4.
Most of the materials in the Banning family subseries are accounts and correspondence related to their business dealings. There are numerous receipts, invoices, bills of exchange, and statements, as well as a small account book containing brief entries of payments. The accounts of Banning, Spencer, and Banning provide detailed information on goods shipped from London by merchants Capel and Osgood Hanbury in 1769, which included clothing, spices, medicines, textiles, fishing equipment, stationary, glass and stoneware, books, gunpowder, wine, cutlery, and anchors.
Most of the Banning’s correspondence deals with business matters from 1787 to 1789, around the time of Anthony Banning’s death. In these letters, Jeremiah and the other executors of the Anthony Banning’s estate communicate with various individuals, including James Scott and John Lloyd, in order to resolve Anthony Banning’s business affairs. There is also some correspondence between family members, including some letters from Katherine B. Chew to her beloved uncle Jeremiah. In these letters, Katherine discusses events in the family and expresses feelings of sadness at Jeremiah’s failure to write to her; Benjamin also wrote to Jeremiah about family life and about business affairs.
This subseries also contains a copy of Henry Banning’s 1778 appointment as captain of a Maryland battalion of militia as part of the war for independence.
The bulk of this subseries consists of personal correspondence between members of the Mason family, along with assorted letters from other relatives, associates, and friends. Almost all of the letters date from 1835 and 1860. There are also letters from family members and others that contain request for patronage and other favors.
The Cliveden series offers a history of the mansion that Benjamin Chew built in Germantown, which the Chew family used as a summer home, and to escape the epidemics of yellow fever in the city. Deeds and accounts comprise the majority of the documents in the series; almost the entire history of the mansion is covered, from estimates of construction costs in the 1760’s to transfers of property titles in the 1930’s. Included are deeds and papers related to the sale of the Cliveden estate by Benjamin Chew to Blair McClenachan after the end of the Revolutionary War, as well as documents pertaining to Benjamin Chew’s repurchase of the property. Other deeds describe the selling or leasing of Cliveden lots after the family finances took a bad turn around the 1850’s.
Since Cliveden was also a farm, a portion of the account papers detail different aspects of harvest operations (potatoes, rye, oat, wheat), including information on wages paid to laborers and bills and receipts for services, repairs, and goods needed at the farm. Other accounts are related to Anne Sophia Penn Chew’s role as administrator of William White Chew’s and Anthony B. Chew’s estates, and financial documents produced by John Keyser and A.D. Cash, attorney and agent, respectively, for Henry B. Chew and Samuel Chew, executors of Benjamin Chew’s estate.
The correspondence describes two main aspects of the development of Cliveden: daily administration affairs and estate administration. Most details about ordinary daily events at Cliveden are found in Anne Sophia Penn Chew’s letters. Topics discussed in letters range from money matters, repairs, and her own difficulties restoring and maintaining the house, to her role in selling and leasing some of the Cliveden lots when the estate endured financial trouble in the second half of the nineteenth century. Letters between Henry B. Chew, James M .Mason and A.D. Cash deal almost exclusively with decisions about Cliveden in the context of their job as executors or administrators of Benjamin Chew’s estate.
Broadsides include not only advertisements for public sale of ground lots but also examples of notices published by Benjamin Chew III against the executors when he was disputing their right to administer Benjamin Chew Jr.’s estate.
Miscellaneous documents in the series include lists and inventories of Cliveden furnishings, and papers related to repairs made to the building throughout the years. There is also a folder with photographs of Benjamin Chew’s coaches, and letters from representatives of organizations, Ford Company among others, interested in such vehicles.
Another interesting side of the development of Cliveden can be seen through the many surveys, ground plans, architectural designs and floor plans featured in the series. These depict the mansion in various forms: Cliveden with its surrounding streets, divided in lots owned or leased by different people, designs for the house rooms, and proposals for doors and windows.
This series includes accounts, articles of agreement, bonds, certifications, deeds, lists and description of lands, legislation, legal papers, memos, notes, notices, newspaper clippings, surveys, patents, and warrants. The bulk of the documentation, however, is comprised of correspondence, most of it between the parties administering Benjamin Chew's estate and the agents acting on their behalf in each county.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, the Chews employed a number of different agents for Allegheny County, including Henry Antes, Benjamin Darlington, Robert Hilands, Charles Israel, and John McDonald. Their correspondence contains discussions about finding renters and buyers for various properties, and details legal disputes with buyers and renters.
This series consists of three boxes divided in four subseries: Baltimore County (including several folders of grants and deeds for land granted by Lord Baltimore, original proprietor of Maryland), Cecil County, Kent County, and Kent County [Swan Point]. There are accounts, bonds, agreements, deeds, leases, patents, mortgages, memos, surveys and wills, and correspondence. Similar to other series covering the land business of the Chew family, most of the letters are between Benjamin Chew and the parties involved in his land transactions, or with agents working on his behalf.
Papers from the Cecil County subseries are mainly related to financial matters. Benjamin Chew kept financial records about his bonds with William Davis and others. In the letters one finds information on the outcome of corn and wheat crops during the 1800’s. Davis and other farmers depended on the sales of their crops to pay the bonds taken from Benjamin Chew; a great number of these letters are remainders to pay monies due. Some of the account papers and letters with John Stoops make reference to the Estate of John Maslin. Letters between Benjamin Chew and Henry Tilghman (working as Chew’s lawyer in Cecil County) deal with land transactions after the Court of Chancery made a decree on William Davis’ land and mortgage. A tract of land called Mercer and business decisions made after what they refer to as “Chew’s Resurvey” are also discussed in the correspondence with Tilghman.
Kent County account papers consist of receipts and bills for repairs but a 1737 bill of sales for negroes have been assigned its own folder. The remaining letters in this subseries describe agent James Ricaud’s efforts to collect rent money on Chew’s behalf and William Tilghman’s, another lawyer working for Chew, discussions about attract of land formerly owned by Robert Foreman. In the correspondence between Benjamin Chew and Thomas Ringgold a reference is made to a bond associated with a Presbyterian Corporation. Benjamin Chew Sr. provided bonds for the development of the Presbyterian Corporation and its later incarnation the Presbyterian Ministers’ Fund.
The Swan Point subseries consists of papers related to a farm owned by Samuel Chew and inherited by his descendants. As executor of Samuel Chew’s estate, Benjamin Chew Jr. was in charge of leasing the farm and distributing the profits among the legatees. In the accounts folder there are financial statements and calculations of shares to be distributed to Maria, Sophia, Henrietta, Julianna and Catherine Chew; some of the accounts are with Henry Holliday, guardian of Anna Maria Chew, another one of the legatees. There are also letters between Benjamin Chew and the sisters discussing different options considered to make Swan Point a more profitable business, as well as the possibility of buying off Julianna’s share in the farm.
Other correspondence includes Benjamin Chew’s letters to his agents in Maryland instructing them on how to handle shipments of wheat seeds to be planted in the farm, and his decisions on offers to buy or rent Swan Point. A number of letters deal with this same issue: people interested in buying or leasing the farm but rejecting Chew’s price tag on the property. Most of the remaining letters describe the business relationship between Chew and individuals renting the farm (John W. Wilmer, William Wilmer, and Arthur Tilghman Jones), exchanges about agricultural matters (fertility of the land), the possible settlement of the Swan Point Estate, and legal issues between Samuel Chew’s heirs and Arthur Tilghman Jones.
The documents in this series pertain to properties held in New Jersey by Benjamin Chew, John Lardner, William Allen and Joseph Turner, and illustrate shifts in land ownership from the 1680s through the 1860s. Included in the series are leases, conveyances, releases, surveys, and deeds, some for properties originally granted to William Penn. Correspondence and account records provide rich details about the daily affairs of real estate management, including lists of rents collected, descriptions of business decisions made during the Revolutionary war, and records of taxes and monies paid to the shareholders of the Andover mine and iron forge. Other materials in this series document legal actions brought against tenants, disputes regarding ownership claims, and claims against the authenticity of land titles. Also of note are papers related to lawsuits brought against the different outfits known as Andover, alternately called Andover Iron Works, Andover Iron Forge, Andover Iron Mine, or Andover Tracts.
As part of their business enterprise, William Allen and Joseph Turner purchased a large tract of land in New Jersey that included forges and furnaces, which had been supplying iron to the Philadelphia region since the 1670s. In 1760, Allen and Turner built an additional furnace called the Union Forge with John Hackett working as their on-site manager and representative; one of the tracts near this forge was divided into plots and leased to laborers and other tenants. Since most of the iron produced by the Allen and Turner furnaces was shipped to England, when the American Revolution began they sided with the loyalists and tried to transfer the titles of their property to third parties. The Board of War, looking for ways to secure a supply of iron and steel for ammunitions, took possession of the mine and furnace during the conflict.
As in other states where the Chews owned land, several agents were hired to oversee and administer the land affairs on their behalf. Archibald Stewart, Amos Grandine, and Robert Taylor were some of the people playing this role for the Chews in New Jersey; Taylor himself became part owner of the Union Tracts and later founded an iron production company.
Folders labeled Spruce Run Turnpike pertain to a legal conflict between Benjamin Chew and neighbors of Kruger Farm. This was a property belonging to Benjamin Chew where the proposed construction of a road provoked disagreements between Chew and the owners of adjacent properties. Among the disputing parties were John Bray and Aaron Vansyckel. Union Tracts/Union Iron Forge was a plot of land divided and then leased to tenants. Robert Taylor was the overseer for Benjamin Chew in New Jersey and wrote to him periodically with reports and updates about the state of affairs in the Union Tracts. Correspondence between Taylor and Chew describe some of the strategies used to sell land according not only to the price per acre but with attention to political situations that could affect real estate values. Andover Mine Bank, in Sussex County, contains descriptions of negotiations between Henry B. Chew, executor of Benjamin Chew’s Estate, and the legal representatives of the rest of the Andover Mine shareholders (John Allen, William Allen, Joseph Turner, John Lardner) and Abram Hewitt. All the remaining interests in Andover were merged into a legal entity called Andover Mine Bank and sold to Hewitt and his associate Edward Cooper. Hewitt went on to play a decisive role in the development and construction of the region railroad system, in no small part due to the use of the iron produced at Andover. Changewater, also in Sussex County, consisted of plots of land in Sussex County that were divided up and leased to tenants. The materials in this subseries provide information about rents collected on these tracts, and highlight legal actions taken against tenants for delinquent accounts.
Related materials can be found in the “Turner Estate” subseries of Series 2, Benjamin Chew (1722-1810) and the “Ingram and Bridger Lands” and “Penn Family Papers” subseries of Series 4, Benjamin Chew Jr. (1758-1844).
In this series are five boxes with documents about Kent, New Castle, and Sussex counties. Two of the boxes contain papers pertaining to Whitehall Plantation, located in Kent County, property of Benjamin Chew and administered by Benjamin Chew Jr.
Kent County documents consist mostly of deeds, leases, bonds, and correspondence regarding the Chew estate administration, business transactions (particularly wheat crops), status of bonds due, the administrative affairs of other estates, and potential real estate transactions (i.e., possible sale of Turkey’s Nest tract). Also of note in this section are wills of various individuals including Andrew Hamilton, former speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (whose will include slaves as part of the property transferred to his heirs).
A small section of the Kent County subseries consists of documents related to a tract of land known as Manor of Frieth, which was dedicated to growing hemp to be used in ship rigging for the Royal Navy stationed in the nearby bay. Samuel Chew and Peter Galloway obtained the land in 1741 from John, Thomas, and Richard Penn, proprietors and governors of Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties. However, part of the tract was also claimed by Lord Baltimore or individuals with titles granted by him. Later on, when Delaware and Maryland established definitive boundary lines, Manor of Frieth was divided between the two states.
The core of the Delaware land papers are the documents related to Whitehall Plantation, a tract of land (approximately four hundred acres) originally owned by Francis Whitwell and bought in 1680 by John Hillyard. Briefs of titles and deeds trace the history of this land from its original owners to Benjamin Chew’s purchase of the property. Broadly, documents in the Whitehall section of the Kent County subseries revolve around three subjects: financial records related to the plantation, instructions on best procedures for daily operations, and discussions about all matters related to the slaves at Whitehall, from shoe sizes and linen for their clothes to proper ways to deal with disobedient slaves. Whitehall’s accounts consist of twelve folders which include Benjamin Chew’s financial notes and records, as well as logs, bills and receipts related to expenses, repairs, crops and slave issues.
Correspondence with George Ford and Joseph Porter, two of the overseers at the plantation, is rich with details about all aspects of the Whitehall administration. Porter served as overseer after Ford ran into problems with Chew for alleged mismanagement of the plantation. Both overseers describe the daily operations, with particular attention devoted to the crops harvested at the plantation. In his responses, Chew enumerates his expectations of the overseers, and advises them on methods to ensure the smooth operation of the outfit and frequently relates the last secured sale of wheat so that they can make decisions accordingly. Chew is very specific on how things should be done: he specifies what part of the barn must be used to store the wheat so it can stay cool and clean, as well as how long the vessels should be delayed at bay while uploading the bushels to be sold. These letters also discuss provisions for the plantation’s slaves, which were transported in the vessels scheduled to pick up the Whitehall crops; these provisions include sugar, molasses, bacon, rice and rum, among others.
Of special note is the correspondence between Benjamin Chew and James Raymond, the latter playing the role of advisor in matters in which Chew did not want to include either Ford or Porter. In their letters Raymond makes arrangements with people who want to hire Chew’s slaves. Raymond also gathered information on slave’s behavior whenever incidents between them and the overseers occurred. Raymond was also in charge of keeping records of cattle and horses at the plantation for possible sale. Another important letter from Benjamin Chew Jr. and his father to Samuel Chew describes the terms agreed upon with George Kennard for the sale of Whitehall and the liberation of the slaves there (Box 773, folder 29).
This section also features documents describing some of the slaves working at the plantation. The folders titled “Lists--Negroes at Whitehall” (Box 775, folder 1) and “Notes on slaves and plantation operations” (Box 775, folder 5) contain inventories with slave’s names and dates of birth. There are also charts with measurements for slave’s shoe sizes. Although not all years are included, detailed memoranda on Whitehall matters between the years 1788 to 1805 can be found in “Memos and Notes” (Box 775, folder 3).
Documents in the New Castle County subseries describe Benjamin Chew’s legal matters, primarily through correspondence between Chew and lawyers working on his behalf in New Castle. Most documents are related to debts owed to Benjamin Chew, particularly notices and accounts of bonds taken by Benjamin Noxon and others, and the efforts made by Benjamin Chew and his associates to recover money due to them. Other papers describe transactions on properties advertised for sheriff’s sales after Court of Chancery decree.
Official papers related to land, such as brief of titles, deeds, releases, patents and surveys, make the bulk of the Sussex County subseries. Also included is a bill of sale for a slave named Hannah and her children.
Documents in this series are related to real estate transactions throughout the United States. States included are represented with one folder each except for Virginia (5 folders plus 2 oversize files). Files about lands in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Wisconsin are related to an Act of Congress granting lands to soldiers from the Pennsylvania militia. All of these documents, mostly deeds and transfers, involve John K. Ewing, a real estate businessman from Uniontown, Fayette County. The connection between Ewing and the Chews is unclear.
The records of the Chew Estate Office provide a detailed look at the financial dealings of Elizabeth Brown Chew (b.1863-d.1958). The estate office managed Elizabeth’s accounts during her later years, and maintained her financial records, as well as many inherited records from the Chew, Brown, and Alston families. The office also managed the Chew and Brown family estates, and secured records from Chew family members who acted as agents of the estates, including Oswald and Benjamin Chew, and Lowry Chew Stephenson.
The bulk of the records in the series pertain to the personal accounts of Elizabeth Chew, the Cliveden estate, stock profits, real estate transactions, taxes, and the estates of Chew and Brown families for the period 1920 to 1960. Original file names were retained when possible.
The account records of Elizabeth Chew detail her expenditures on groceries, flowers, household goods, gifts, and magazine subscriptions in the 1950s. Elizabeth’s munificent donations to children’s aid organizations, hospitals, veterans’ organizations, religious institutions, and historical societies are also well documented. Elizabeth’s tax records, as well as her stock earning statements, are copiously represented in the series. Several companies and banks managed Elizabeth’s and the Chew family assets, but one, the Girard Trust Bank, later named the Girard Trust Corn Exchange Bank, appeared to play a key role in the management of the Chew’s finances. Accordingly, much of the correspondence related to Chew-owned stocks was generated by the Girard Trust Bank. Girard Trust Bank checkbooks, containing checks signed by Oswald Chew, John Thompson Chew, and Lowry Chew Stephenson, are included in this series as they appear to pertain to the Chew-Brown Estate, rather than the personal accounts of any individual. Oswald Chew’s personal checkbooks can be found in Series XV.
In addition, the series contains a plethora of records pertaining to property sales and leases for lots near the Cliveden estate, as well as Chew properties in Philadelphia, Villa Nova, Radnor, and Beaver County, Pennsylvania; Camden and Silver Lake, New Jersey; Towson and Tacoma, Maryland; and Dover, New Hampshire. Also included in this series are records relating to Cliveden property, including maintenance bills, household inventories, and employee payment and tax files. The folder, “Cliveden and Chew family notes,” contains histories of Benjamin Chew, including 19th-century notes on Chew family history. Only a small number of records for the Brown family’s Radnor home are present in the series.
Incorporation documents, tax and revenue records, correspondence, and meeting minutes for the Chew-owned Gloucester Land Company are well represented in this series. In addition, a smaller number of records for other Chew-owned businesses, such as the Manufacturer’s Land and Improvement Company and the Radnor Realty Company, are included.
The series also contains estate records and wills for various Chew, Brown, Alston, and Johnson family members, including Anna S.P.C. Alston; David S., Elizabeth J., Joseph J., and Martha Brown; as well as Benjamin, Charles R., David S.B., Elizabeth, Henry, Mary J.B., Oswald, Samuel, and Samuel, Jr. Chew.
This series contains forty-six flat files, four boxes, and 18 oversize rolled items, [some of which are available as digital files, upon request.] The materials in this series represent a wide range of cartographic types, from eighteenth century manuscript and engraved surveys and maps to twentieth century printed atlases and blueprints. Some of the maps were purchased from merchants in London; other manuscript surveys were made to document land transactions in which the Chews may have had a personal or legal interest. A number of the maps relate to the construction of roads, canals, and rail road routes. There are many prominent surveyors and cartographers represented in this collection, including Nicholas Scull, George Heap, Reading Howell, John Churchman, Aaron Arrowsmith, John Reed, Charles de Krafft, John Hills, Thomas Holme, John Melish, and Griffiths Morgan Hopkins. The geographic scope of these maps is also broad. There are surveys of sections of Philadelphia, charts of waterways, maps of cities in the United States and abroad, and maps of continents. Other maps, surveys and plans are located throughout the collection; a large portion of these materials may be found in Series 11 (Brown and Johnson Families), Series 13 (David S. Brown and Co.), and Series 19 (Pennsylvania Land Papers).
This series consists of a motley assortment of items, some of which may have been collected by Cliveden staff members to be displayed at the home. Material has been arranged alphabetically by subject or title, and there are several significant groups, which include booklets and pamphlets, catalogs, newspapers, and serials. Beyond these groups, there are broadsides and posters, examples of Continental currency, clippings, trade cards, calling cards, handbills, maps, menus, programs, novels, and sheet music.
Among the booklets and pamphlets, researchers will find an array of speeches, most given by politicians and lawyers, such as an address on the promotion of agriculture given by William Tilghman, L.L.D. before the Philadelphia Society (1820) and a speech delivered before the U. S. Senate by Reprehensive John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina on the “Three Million [Dollar] Bill” (1847). There are also several folders of legal booklets that consist of published opinions, judgments, and appeals from scattered court cases dating from the 1800s. Religious pamphlets comprise another significant group, and consist mostly of writings on spiritual guidance and scriptural studies. In addition to these groups, there are also several folders of miscellaneous pamphlets; booklets published in French, German, and Spanish; and a few items highlighting the history of Germantown.
Most of the catalogs in this series date from the 1960s and are from the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York City. It is unclear whether these were collected by Cliveden staff members or the Chew family, but several of them contain annotations concerning auction items relating to the Chews. There are also catalogs from various exhibitions; school, including Princeton University; and other art, book, and map auctions.
Rounding out the series is a large group of serials that range from formal journals to popular magazines, such as Life. The magazines from Philadelphia and several journals, such as The Magazine of American History, were collected specifically for their articles on the Chews or Germantown; however, most of the material bears no relation to the family or the house. At the end of the series are three boxes of newspapers that span in date from the late 1700s through the mid-twentieth century, most of which were published in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, but there are also international publications represented here. In addition to magazines, newspapers and journals, there are small selections of almanacs, miscellaneous newsletters, and newspaper supplements.
This series consists primarily of records the Chews had reproduced in the 1800s for family genealogical reference. Most of these documents are copies of original family trees, birth, death, and marriage certificates, correspondence, wills, significant speeches and land grants, which dated from the late sixteenth through mid-eighteenth centuries. In addition to the reproductions, there are original family trees, several printed genealogical texts, notes and correspondence, as well as Samuel Chew and Mary Galloway’s original marriage certificate. Aside from documents pertaining to the Chew family, there are also family trees and other materials related to the Morris, Frisby, Lloyd, and Cadwalader families.
Among the individual portraits, Chew family members who are particularly well represented here are Samuel Chew (1832 - 1887), Mary Johnson Brown Chew (1839-1927), Anne Sophia Penn Chew Alston (1862 - 1930), Elizabeth Brown Chew (1863-1958), David Sands Brown Chew (1866 - 1933), Samuel Chew (1871 - 1919), Benjamin Chew (1878-1938), Oswald Chew (1880 - 1950), Mary Evelyn Chew Stephenson Windsor (d.1949), Samuel Chew (1915 - 1989), and Mary Gabriela Rebecca Cecilia ("Nelly") de Potestad Tilghman.
The photographs are arranged into three sections: portraits of individuals; Chew family group photographs; and photographs of unidentified subjects.
There are a number of photographic and lithographic postcards featuring Cliveden. Additionally there are stereoscopic photographs of both the interior and exterior of the house, and photographs of architectural drawings and plans of the house. Aside from the extensive visual documentation of Cliveden, the architectural photographs also include images of other Chew family residences, houses in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, and lands in New Jersey owned by the Chew and Brown families. Finally, this subseries includes photographs of Chew family carriages, views probably taken by family members during vacations to sites in the United States and Europe, as well as commercially produced stereopticon cards of historical sites.
At eight boxes and one flat file, this small series contains a variety of records, from miscellaneous accounts and drawings to legal papers, writings, and recipes. There are two folders of alphabetically-arranged correspondence, highlights of which include a letter dated 24 January 1820 from John Quincy Adams to William D. Lewis, Esq. in which Adams discusses Levitt Harris, U. S. Consul at St. Petersburg, Russia; letters concerning lands in Virginia from George Chambers of Chambersburg to George Thompson, a Philadelphia merchant; and a letter of recommendation for one Mary Church dated May 1733/4 from Andrew Pitt to James Logan. There is an additional folder of letters of which the correspondents are unknown or unidentified.
In this series are also several folders of clippings, most of which were removed from a severely mold-damaged scrapbook. The clippings have been housed in eleven folders in the order in which they were found. The clippings appear to be from mostly local newspapers (i.e. the Ledger and Transcript, the Philadelphia Press, the Evening Bulletin) and date from 1860s. There is no apparent order to the clippings in each folder; there are scattered war stories, recipes and instructions, bank statements, historical sketches, and passenger ship lists.
Box 837, folder 7 contains handwritten transcriptions of letters and a journal from Major John André, a British offer and spy during the Revolutionary War. The letters, dated 1769 to 1770 and housed as a large booklet, are identified as having been “written by Major André at the age of eighteen to his friend Miss Seward.” The transcriber is unknown, although the name “Clapton” is listed at the beginning of the booklet. In the same folder is a transcription in French of a journal entitled “Journal du Sénégal, en 1779. On this booklet is a sticker labeled “Major André facsimiles,” although the connection between this journal and Major André is unclear.
Other items in this series include a portion of an encyclopedia, possibly from the late 1700s; a collection of botanical samples; several folders of photocopies; an anonymous address book; a book of spiritual writings; two account books attributed to a James Angelo; and a soft-cover book that contains large fabric or wallpaper samples
This project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this finding aid do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was provided by the Abington Junior High School History Club, Lee Arnold (in memory of Eric Ledell Smith), Lawrence I. Baume (also in memory of Eric Ledell Smith), Frank S. Chew, Neal Demp, Carol A. Ingald, Howard H. Lewis, and Esther Ann McFarland.
A significant number of documents in this collection were cleaned for mold. There are a large number of oversize maps that are stored on rolls. These items are not easily accessed, and will require assistance for viewing. A significant portion of this collection was minimally processed in 1982-1983, and a small finding aid was created to describe the materials. That finding aid has been superseded; old box numbers have been changed; and multiple later accessions have been incorporated into this collection. There were numerous inventories created by the Chew family prior to the donation of this collection to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. While some of these inventories can be found in the collection, many of them are available by asking an archivist for permission to view the collection files.
Many people provided help during the processing of this collection, from unfolding bundles to writing series descriptions; much gratitude is due to Cary Majewicz, Heather Willever-Farr, Dean Williams, Heather Thomas, Jennifer Barr, Megan DiStefano, Kate Jacobs, Christina Elia, and Titus Moolathara.
Many thanks are also due to the conservation and preservation staff who washed, mended, humidified, flattened, cleaned, and rehoused items in this collection: Leah Mackin, Tara O’Brien, Anni Altshuler, Watsuki Harrington, and many interns.
The collection is open for research.
Gift of the Chew family, 1982 and 1985 (no accession numbers); gift of Ellen Ballard, 2007 (2007.055); transfers from Cliveden, 1990, 1998, 2005-2008 (no accession numbers); transfer from Cliveden, 2006 (2006.017).
Purchases made by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 1956 (no accession number), 2008, from Ronald Lieberman (2008.065).
One group of these papers, formerly called the “Oswald Chew Papers,” was put on deposit at the Historical Society in 1947. A second group of papers was collected at Cliveden, and was brought to HSP in 1974. Another group remained at Cliveden, or with other family members, until the major donation of the papers in 1982. Later accessions from Cliveden occurred in 1990, 1998, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. While the first two sections of the papers were housed at HSP, the Chew family maintained the right to remove any section of the collection for any period of time they saw fit, so long as at least two of the heirs made the request. In 1981, the family removed all of the papers from the Society in the hopes of sorting out the final destination of the entire collection. After some deliberation, the family donated the full collection to HSP. As part of the original agreement, the family removed some of the most valuable materials in the collection, which they sold in an auction at Christie’s; HSP purchased some of the documents that were put up for bid. (See Colonial American Documents…from the Chew Family Papers for more information.)
The following collections, which used to be housed separately, have been integrated into this collection: Benjamin Chew Papers (125), David Sands Brown Chew Papers (126), and Samuel Chew Papers (1746). There are a series of architectural drawings of additions and modifications to Cliveden that were done by Cope and Stewardson and Louis Rush (dating from the early 20th century), which are still listed as “on deposit” at the Historical Society. These materials may be integrated into the collection at a later date, once the ownership of these drawings is determined.
Cite as: [Indicate cited item or series here], Chew Family Papers (Collection 2050), The Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Brown Family Papers (1617)
David Sands Brown Receipt Book (108)
David Sands Brown and Co. Records (1586)
Benjamin Chew Plans for Cliveden (no collection number, on deposit)
Cadwalader Family Papers (1454)
George M. Dallas Papers (1460A)
Gilpin Family Papers (238)
Indian Papers (310)
James Logan Papers (2011)
Logan Family Papers (2023)
Mason and Dixon Line Papers (Am.233)
Morris Family Papers (2000B)
Penn Family Papers (485A)
Richard Peters Papers (498)
Rawle Family Papers (536)
William Tilghman Papers (659)
Burd Family Papers, University of Delaware
Benjamin Chew letters, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Cornell University
Benjamin and Samuel Chew Papers, Historical Society of Delaware
Mary Johnson Brown Chew Collection, Independence National Historic Park
Custis-Lee-Mason Family Papers, Library of Virginia
Female Association of Philadelphia…Records, Haverford College
Galloway-Maxcy-Markoe Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
Margaret Izard Manigault Papers, Hagley Museum and Library
James Murray Mason Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress
Mason Family Papers, Alderman Library, University of Virginia
Morris Family Papers, Hagley Museum and Library
Edward Shippen letters and papers, American Philosophical Society
Frederick Smyth papers, American Philosophical Society
“Benjamin Chew.”
Blackman, Ann. “Fatal Cruise of the Princeton,”
Cliveden of the National Trust. “History of Cliveden.” http://cliveden1767.wordpress.com/
Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of New Jersey.
Fishman, Joel. “Historical Sketch to Land Titles in Western Pennsylvania.” Pittsburgh: Historic Pittsburgh, 2002. http://digital.library.pitt.edu/maps/warrantee/historical_sketch.html
Green, Jennifer L. “Cliveden: Legacy of the Chew Women of Germantown.” Graduate student paper. West Chester University, 2004. http://www.cliveden.org/Content/Research/legacy%20of%20Chew%20Women.pdf
Harper, Steven Craig.
Jordan, John W., ed.
Koelble, Susan S. and Kristin K. Bryson.
Konkle, Burton Alva.
Nash, Gary B. and Jean R. Soderlund.
Pencak, William A. and Daniel K. Richter, eds.
Pritchard, Margaret Beck, and Henry G. Taliaferro.
Richards, Nancy E.
Richter, Daniel K.
Rutherfurd, Livingston.
Snyder, Martin P.
Treese, Lorett.