McCall family papers

Table of Contents

Summary Information

Background note

Scope and content note

Overview of arrangement

Administrative Information

Related Materials

Controlled Access Headings

General note

Collection Inventory

McCall personal documents

McCall business and legal documents

Keating family papers

Gibson, Page, and Read families legal matters

Miscellaneous

Summary Information

Repository

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Creator

McCall

Title

McCall family papers

ID

4088

Date

1742-1936, undated (Bulk 1821-1891)

Extent

6.8 Linear feet ; 16 boxes, 6 flat files

Author

Finding aid prepared by Randi M. Kamine.

Language

English

Abstract

The McCall family papers consist primarily of the business and personal letters of Peter McCall (1809-1880). McCall was a prominent Philadelphia lawyer. He practiced law from 1830 until his death, and he server as mayor of Philadelphia from 1844 to 1845. The collection also includes many documents from the Keating family, particularly Peter McCall Keating (1884-1959), son of Edith McCall Keating (daughter of Peter McCall) and Dr. John M. Keating. Comprising much of the collection are business and personal invoices and receipts, which provide insights into the lifestyle of the McCall family. Personal and business correspondence, wills, and deeds further inform the society in which the McCalls lived. There are also newspaper clippings that cover the years 1787 to 1936, as well as miscellaneous items and ephemera.

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Background note

Peter McCall’s prominence as a successful Philadelphia lawyer brought him in contact with many notable persons in the Philadelphia area. He graduated Princeton University in 1826. He was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of the Law Academy of Philadelphia. Involved in all manner of things Philadelphia, he was a member of the City Council for several terms in the 1840s and 1850s and mayor in 1844 and 1845. He married Jane Byrd Mercer (1825-1895) in 1846, and they had eight children together.

The McCall family’s history in Philadelphia began when Peter’s great-grandfather. George McCall (1683-1740). immigrated from Scotland in 1701. George became a successful businessman in the city in partnership with his brother Samuel (1681-1759). The family continued to be prosperous and in high regard within the community.

Peter McCall’s sister, Edith, married John M. Keating, MD. The Keatings were also a prestigious Philadelphia family, and they had deep Irish roots. Dr. Keating was a civically-minded and well-regarded person within the Philadelphia community.

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Scope and content note

Documents in the McCall family papers date from 1749 to 1936, with the bulk dating to the mid-ninteenth century. The McCall family’s involvement with all manner of Philadelphia society reflected in legal documents and personal correspondence would be of interest to any researcher delving into the social, political, and cultural life of well-to-do Philadelphians in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The business and legal correspondence could be significant tools for those interested in the legal practices of the day. To some extent, commercial activity can be gleaned from the abundance of invoices and receipts in the collection.

Peter McCall’s legal work, primarily involved inheritance and real estate, is the primary subject of most of the materials present. He helped prepare wills and deeds for many prominent local families, including the Keatings, Pages, and Reads. Among the many wills in the collection is that of his own, probated 1880. There are also scores of land deeds indicating that much of McCall’s legal responsibilities concerned the buying, selling, and renting of property, as well as estate management.

There are scant papers from the Civil War years; however, there is an interesting letter from George G. Meade to McCall. Written in 1860, when Meade was still a captain, he writes to McCall requesting the favor of writing to a mutual acquaintance and to act on Meade’s behalf. A separate folder contains letters written during the war years. Many are written by Peter’s nephew, Charles A. McCall.

The pro-slavery essay, Bible View of Slavery, published in 1861 by Bishop John Henry Hopkins of Vermont, drew McCall's interest. Correspondence in this collection suggests that McCall had Copperhead leanings. (McCall was elected as a Whig when he ran for mayor of Philadelphia in the 1840s, but he was a Democrat during the Civil War.) A treatise located in Box 1, Folder 6, asks, “Negro suffrage in the South – What does that mean there?” The response, written by an unknown author, is: “Why, it means to put the old masters under the feet of their former slaves – It means the subordination of the white to the black race –the men of Caucasian descent to the Children of Ham.”

Correspondence shows that Peter McCall had personal and business relationships with A. Sydney Biddle, Horace Binney, and the Cadwalader family (with whom the McCalls were related by marriage). Another distinguished Philadelphian with whom McCall had a relationship with was Doctor Benjamin Rush, who was a good friend. The many personal letters in the collection shows that McCall had a close and loving connection to many members of the close-knit Rush family.

McCall also had a particularly close relationship with his nephew Rodolph McCall. McCall apparently paid for his school tuition when he was in school in the 1860s. There are personal letters and report cards from that time (Box 1, Folder 8). Other interesting items among McCall's personal materisls (Box 1, Folders 1-5) include letters that speak to the issue of slavery, and those beseeching help from acquaintances. One letter mentions the 1844 Philadelphia riots. Another mentions Indian affaira. And there is one is from McCall discussing women’s rights. There is also an invitation to participate in a testimonial for the late Chief Justice Roger Taney (died 1864), a draft of a letter to General Lafayette dated 1829, a letter dated 1852 to McCall that recalls the sinking of the USS Powhatan off the coast of New Jersey in 1854, as well as one on the sinking of the  SS City of Glasgow that same year.

Beyond letters, there are receipts and invoices in the collection that reflect both business and personal expenses of the McCalls between 1829 and 1924. They demonstrate well the family's upper-middle class lifestyle. There are bills from jewelers, and those for merchandise such as lady’s handbags, traveling trunks, towels, napkins and other household goods. There are also invoices that show maintenance outside the home – brick, wood, paint,and so on. Business receipts include payments for work done, including hauling office equipment to McCall’s office, rent receipts, and bank notes.

During processing, sub-groups of papers emerged from the larger collection, such as legal papers of the Gibson, Page, and Read families. There is also a large grouping of documents from the Keating family. Peter McCall Keating (1884-1959), grandson of Peter McCall and a physician, went to France before the United States entered the First World War to work on one of the first ambulance trains. These trains became field hospitals serving French soldiers on the front line. Seventeen letters are in the collection written in 1915 and 1916 from France to McCall’s mother, Edith McCall Keating (Box 9, Folder 10).

This is also an extensive series of letters that detail a long ongoing litigation over a parcel of land in Virginia (Box 3, Folder 8). Letters pertaining to this legal battle are dated from 1852 to 1868. A reading of these letters could help the researcher track the development of, and shed light on, property rights in the mid nineteenth century.

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Overview of arrangement

Series 1. McCall Personal Documents,1821-1924, undated

Subseries a. Correspondence, 1821-1876, undated

Subseries b. Personal invoices and receipts, 1828-1924, undated

Series 2. McCall business and legal documents, 1742-1913, undated

Subseries a. Business correpsondnece, 1824-1891, undated

Subseries b. Wills and deeds, 1742-1913, undated

Subseries c. Miscellaneous legal matters, 1773-1904, undated

Series 3. Keating family papers, 1818-1936, undated

Series 4. Gibson, Page, and Read families legal matters, 1805-1857

Series 5. Miscellaneous, 1749-1936, undated

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Administrative Information

Publication Information

 Historical Society of Pennsylvania ; 2019

Access restrictions

The collection is open for research.

Provenance

Gift of Peter McCall, courtesy of James Sands and Mark Willcox, 1990.

Accession number 90.5.

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Related Materials

Related materials

At the Historical Society of Pennsylvania:

Cadwalader family papers (Collection 1454)

George Archibald McCall papers (Collection 1635)

Samuel McCall journal (Am.9218)

McCall family papers (Collection 1786)

For an interesting contemporary observation on the character and accomplishments of Peter McCall see: A memoir of the late Hon. Peter McCall read before the Association at the Hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Thursday evening January 13, 1881, (call number Biog. M122h 1881).

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Controlled Access Headings

Genre(s)

• Business records.
• Legal records.

Subject(s)

• Business history
• Business Transactions--Philadelphia--19th century
• Business--History--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--19th century.
• Business--Litigation and Lawsuits--18th century
• Legal Disputes--19th century.
• Legal Documents--19th century.

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General note

For an interesting contemporary observation on the character and accomplishments of Peter McCall see: A memoir of the late Hon. Peter McCall read before the Association at the Hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Thursday evening January 13, 1881, (call number Biog.M122h 1881).

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Collection Inventory