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Historical Society of Hilltown Township local history collection
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Held at: Historical Society of Hilltown Township [Contact Us]P.O. Box 79, Hilltown, Pennsylvania, 18927-0079
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Historical Society of Hilltown Township. 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 first recorded history in Hilltown Township [Bucks County, Pennsylvania] was made in 1683, when William Penn met the Indian Chiefs of the Delaware Nation on the land where Hilltown Village now sits.
"In those days, it was known as the "Perkasie Indian Town." The settlers arrived in approximately 1700. The settlers were mostly Welsh Baptist, with a few Huguenots and English Quakers. They petitioned the King's Governor to establish a town in 1721.
"The old Bethlehem Road (the Minsi Indian trail), now called Hilltown Pike, was used from the year 1683 to travel from Philadelphia to the Durham iron mines.
"The Mennonites arrived in 1727, with the Germans coming shortly after. Hilltown Township remained a farming community up until the end of World War II, when new single homes were built here and there. Large developments started at the end of the 1970's."
Bibliography:
Quoted text from: Hilltown Township, Bucks County, PA. "History of Hilltown Township." Accessed March 14, 2013. http://www.hilltown.org/information/history.aspx
This collection primarily consists of original documents relating to Hilltown Township individuals, families, businesses, and properties. It features a large number of deeds from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, some photographs, and several 19th-century area maps.
Among the largest sub-groups in this collection are about one dozen Moyer family business volumes. These include Harry C. Moyer's (Blooming Glen, PA) account books (indexed) and daybooks, 1900-1935, and William C. Moyer's account books, circa 1900. Another large sub-group is forms from a Bucks County Conservancy inventory of historical sites, featuring descriptions of Hilltown properties, locations, and photographs.
The collection also contains a fair amount of school-related materials such as student publications, photographs, and ephemera relating to area schools, particularly the Deep Run School District and Hilltown High School. Along with the other materials, there are four scrapbooks that document Deep Run Schools from 1961-1964.
This collection includes original materials, such as the Elizabeth Morris' memoirs, 1803, relating to some of the first families to settle in Hilltown, including the Thomas, Morris, and Treppler families. Members of the Thomas family served as the area's first Baptist ministers. There are items relating to Robert Evans' estate sale, 1834-1835 and other early 18th-century documents. Some original manuscripts are on display in the Homestead building, chiefly property and estate records of Thomas Jones, Jr. and Nathan Brittin, 1790-1808.
Other items of special interest in the collection include: the constitution and minutes of the Hilltown Baptist Mission Society, 1827; a stock book of the Hilltown and Sellersville Turnpike Road Company, 1853-1914; a cartes-de-visite photo album of Sarah L. Weiss, 1866; one daybook and two account books of Joel Rosenberger of Hilltown, 1874-1880; four ledgers of Postmaster's Account and Record Books, 1898-1913; poetry scrapbooks and a commonplace book, circa 1900-1957; meeting minutes of the United Literary Societies of Bucks County, 1914-1917; a daybook of Edward Lynch, 1920-1923; and Cephus K. Crouthamel (Sellersville, Pa) cancelled checks and receipts, ca 1925-1950.
Materials collected at various times from various sources by the Historical Society of Hilltown Township.
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 Historical Society of Hilltown Township directly for more information.
People
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Historical Society of Hilltown Township
- 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 Historical Society of Hilltown Township for information about accessing this collection.