Main content
Wilma B. Rezer local history research
Notifications
Held at: Doylestown Historical Society [Contact Us]56 S Main St., Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 18901
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Doylestown 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
Wilma Brown Rezer was a lifelong resident and local historian of Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Born in Philadelphia in 1915, she moved to Doylestown as a baby. From 1964 to 1975, she owned and operated a store called Rock-a-Bye Baby Shoppe. After losing her hearing in 1977, Rezer began researching her house's history and became fascinated with the story of a former slave who owned property in Doylestown. She continued to dig into the history of many local properties, writing many historic plaques for the Doylestown Community Association's program. In 1981 she finished a book entitled Doylestown: And How It Came to Be, 1724-1980. Rezer's husband, Martin R. Rezer, died in 1987; she passed away in 1993.
Bibliography:
Drill, Herb. "Wilma Brown Rezer, 78; Was Amateur Historian." Philadelphia Inquirer. September 30, 1993. Accessed July 22, 2013. http://articles.philly.com/1993-09-30/news/25987170_1_histories-family-slave.
This collection is organized into two series: I. Research files, and II. Writings.
Series I. Research files is organized into files by the year researched, from 1804 to 1966. It consists largely of Rezer's handwritten notes, with some photocopies of newspaper articles and original newspaper clippings (circa 1855-1870). At the end of this series have been added computer print-outs of Edward Levenson's column for the Doylestown-Buckingham-New Britain Patch, "This Was Doylestown" (circa 2010).
Series II. Writings includes several copies of Doylestown: And How It Came to Be (published for the Bucks County 300th Centennial, 1982), as well as sales records for that book. The series also includes binders of research on other topics, mostly from 1980: "Five Main Tracts, Doylestown Township, Deeds 1-20"; "Charles Shade Estate Tracts, Lots 1-44"; "The Story of a Box of Deeds"; "A Tribute in Memory - dedicated to my mother"; "The Historic District of Doylestown, Pa., dates, locations and verifications of existing houses"; and "A History of the Doylestown Public School, 1889-1973" (1987).
Unknown.
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 Doylestown Historical Society directly for more information.
People
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Doylestown 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
-
Contact Doylestown Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.