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Greater Media Area Auxiliary, American Leprosy Missions records
Notifications
Held at: Delaware County Historical Society [Contact Us]408 Avenue of the States, Chester, Pennsylvania, 19013
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Delaware County Historical Society. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Christian-based organization, American Leprosy Missions, was founded in 1906 to support medical and rehabilitation services for those afflicted with leprosy in developing countries in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It supplies medicine, finances research, contributes to public health and education programs, and offers leadership to the staff of the International Journal of Leprosy and Other Mycobacterial Diseases.
The Greater Media Area Auxiliary of American Leprosy Missions, initially called the Media Auxiliary of the Mission to Lepers in India and the East, was founded in 1914 by 21 sickly and house-bound women who had previously formed a charitable society to help those in the area of Media (Delaware County, Pennsylvania). The first group of officers included Mrs. S. Harper Leeper, Mary Leeper, Bessie Tyndale, and Mrs. Edward Sawyer Martin. The goals of the auxiliary were to assist its parent organization by providing information about leprosy worldwide and helping to sponsor overseas efforts to help cure and rehabilitate those afflicted with the disease. By the 1990s the Media Chapter of the American Leprosy Missions was experiencing a declining and aging membership. It dissolved in 2010.
Bibliography:
Peters, Terry. "Group Pledges to Fight Leprosy." Delaware County Daily Times. October 16, 1999. Clipping found in collection.
This collection, which consists of minutes, correspondence, clippings, ephemera, and a few photographs, primarily documents the Greater Media Area Auxiliary of the American Leprosy Missions fundraising and outreach efforts. It provides some accounts of mission work abroad.
Gift of American Leprosy Missions Auxiliary, 2011 (accession 2011.18).
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Delaware County Historical Society directly for more information.
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Delaware County Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Faith Charlton through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact Delaware County Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.