Shippen family. Papers, 1749-1899.
Title:
Papers, 1749-1899.
This collection of personal and professional papers spans several generations of the Shippens and related families. Joseph Shippen [III] was a colonel in the provincial service, a merchant, and a secretary of colonial Pennsylvania and the Governor's Council. Following the Revolution, he was occupied as a gentleman farmer in Chester County. Some of Joseph Shippen's correspondence, 1749-1809 touches on his military and political career, but most of the letters are to and from his brother Edward Shippen [IV] and nephew Edward Burd relating to the family's extensive real estate holdings throughout Pennsylvania. The main body of the collection is incoming correspondence, 1829, 1842-1897, to Edward Shippen, grandson of Joseph Shippen. His correspondents include his father, Joseph Galloway Shippen, his mother, Anna Maria Buckley Shippen, his siblings Anna Maria (Mrs. William) Newell, Harriet Amelia Shippen, and Joseph Shippen, his aunt, Margaret Shippen, and sundry other relatives. These letters relate family and social news, advice to Edward as he begins his legal career, and family business. There are letters, ca. 1849-ca. 1876 to Shippen from his wife, Augusta Chauncey Twiggs, from Georgia where she lived with relatives for several winters and visited frequently. Augusta writes of her efforts in raising her children alone, her several disagreements with her husband over family problems, and the coming of the Civil War. In 1848, Shippen began his own law practice, assuming the business of his uncle, James Gibson. Gibson's letterpress volumes, 1802-1847 and Shippen's letterpress volumes, 1848-1872 are concerned with clients' estates, properties, and stocks. Loose letters and documents also relate to legal affairs including cases involving insurance companies and estates, many concerning family members. Among the estates represented are those of E. B. Bordley, Daniel Buckley, Sarah Burd, Hannah and Jacob L. Florance, Francis Stockton, Twiggs family. Edward Shippen served in several diplomatic posts from 1872 to 1898. He was an officer of the Chilean and Argentinian Commissions to the Centennial Exhibition and served as Philadelphia consul for the two countries at various times, as well as for Japan and Ecuador. This collection holds miscellaneous correspondence, official papers, clippings and memorabilia concerning this aspect of his career. Other papers of members of this extended family who are represented in the papers are incoming letters, 1799-1872 to Margaret Shippen from her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews; letter fragments, 1852-1883, of Edward's sister Harriet Amelia to her nephews William and Edward Newell which give Harriet's observations on European society and politics, and comparisons with the United States; correspondence of (another) Edward Shippen, M.D., a career surgeon with the U. S. Navy, consists of family letters, 1855-1856, from his wife Mary Katharine Paul, and Dr. Shippen's letters to his wife while he was on tour to Brazil, 1859-1860, and to Europe, 1865-1868. Josiah Harmar, related to the Shippen family through the Buckley branch, was a Revolutionary War officer, commander of the army stationed on the Ohio frontier, 1784-1791, and adjutant-general of Pennsylvania, 1793-1799. A small number of letters in this collection are to Harmar from John Cleves Symmes, which cover his post-Revolutionary military service. A larger group of letters, 1800-1813, are from Harmar's successive agents in Cincinnati, Ohio, reporting on land investments there. After Harmar's death, this correspondence is addressed to his wife Sarah and then to his son William. William Harmar account books, 1827-1868 and loose financial records, 1807-1872, relate mostly to the Josiah Harmar estate. There is Josiah Harmar, Jr., quarry account book, 1842-1847. Also from the Buckley side of the family are 300 pages of prose and poetry for and by Elizabeth Bordley Gibson (Mrs. James). The papers include scattered correspondence of many other Shippens. Additionally there are papers of several individuals of no (known) genetic connection: incoming letters, 1843-1859 of James Burnside, Clearfield County judge, mentions court activities, politics, and personal business; Charles D. Drake's prose and poetic inspirations, 1832-1834, from Cincinnati; Henry Huber's accounts, 1852-1865, as treasurer of the State in Schuylkill; letters and drafts, 1783-1789, of Frederick Smyth, colonial chief justice of New Jersey, mostly concerning his efforts to gain compensation from the British government for deprivations incurred as a result of his loyalist position during the Revolution.
ArchivalResource:
21 linear ft.
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