Accounts include receipts for household goods such as food, liquor, fabric, wood, grain, and wages paid to servants and laborers;receipts for payments received on bonds, loans, and debts;annual lists of Benjamin Chew's estimates of the holdings of his estate;records of rents and mortgages paid by tenants for family lands in Maryland and for crops grown on Maryland lands;records of short-term loans with family members;receipts for expenses Benjamin paid for his children;bills of exchange;subscriptions to various publications and in various organizations;receipts for pew rent paid in several Philadelphia and Germantown churches and for a family burial vault built at St. Peter's Church;records of the building of a dam and sluice at Whitehall Meadows in Passyunk Township;and other accounts and cashbooks of use to any researcher looking to track Chew's expenditures and receipts, whether for household goods or the labor of slaves. Affiliations and Service tracks Benjamin Chew Jr.'s involvement in many philanthropic and political organizations, including the Academy and College of Philadelphia, the Episcopal church, the Indigent Widows' and Single Women's Society, the Marine Insurance Company, Philadelphia Common Council, and the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. The Bonds and Agreements subseries contains financial agreements, including various forms of loans issued by Benjamin Chew Jr., transfers of land, and purchases of interest in property. Benjamin Chew Jr.'s correspondence is rich with information about his family life, business affairs, land purchases, financial transactions, management of the Chews' farms, and transfer of slaves. Many of these letters discuss the mundane events in the daily lives of the Chews and their friends, but there are significant exchanges about legal matters, war and American independence, outbreaks of yellow fever, politics, and slavery. In an effort to create more useful description in this voluminous series of correspondence, many of the folder titles have been enhanced to include a brief description of important topics in that folder. Benjamin Chew Jr. was involved in the administration of several family members' estates, which are described in the Estates subseries, which is 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. Germantown and Perkiomen Turnpike subseries relate to the business dealings of Benjamin Chew Jr. while serving as president of the Germantown and Perkiomen Turnpike Road Company. The Ingram and Bridger Lands subseries deals with the he land granted to John Bellers of London by William Penn. Thomas Ingram and John and Rebecca Bridger made title claims on various tracts in Cumberland, Morris, Salem, and Sussex Counties in New Jersey, based on the inheritance of Mary Ingram. Materials in this subseries document these claims and the work done by the Chew family for Ingram and the Bridgers. The papers here include records, agents, accounts' accountsunts, surveyors's fees, payments by tenants, agreements, bonds, legal papers, correspondence, deeds, and surveys. The Law subseries includes case files, accounts, notes, and miscellaneous documents generated during Chew's work as a lawyer in Philadelphia. The papers in the miscellaneous subseries are from a broad range of Benjamin Chew's activities, both personal and public. Included here are architectural drawings by Robert Mills of Chew's house on Fourth Street, notes, advertisements, catalogues, diaries and other materials created during Chew's studies at the Middle Temple, essays, reports on his children's performance in school, inventories, membership certificates, memos, clippings, petitions, recipes, recommendations, and other materials. Many of the documents in Nicklin and Griffith subseries are related to legal cases, but there are also account records, correspondence, agreements, and land papers. Penn Family Papers subseries includes papers from Benjamin Chew Jr. time serving as Richard and Mary Penn's attorney from the 1780s until 1812, a year after Richard Penn's death, when Thomas Cadwalader was appointed as Mrs. Penn's attorney. Also included are documents relating Penns' property sales and rentals, accounts with tenants, surveys of land, payments for supplies to repair property, deeds, and leases. Pike v. Hoare subseries outlines the entirety of the case in the copies of the records, including accounts, correspondence, legal papers, deeds, surveys, and maps. Property subseries documents some of Benjamin Chew Jr.'s land holdings, including Cliveden, the Wilson lands, a townhouse on Third Street, and miscellaneous tracts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Also included are inventories prepared to calculate taxes owed on property, furniture, gold, and silver. Slaves and Servants, an artificial grouping of documents, creates a sketch of Benjamin Chew Jr.'s activities as a slaveholder.
