Main content
Mathias family papers
Notifications
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 Mathias family, of Scotch-Irish descent, was one of the first families to settle in Hilltown Township (Bucks County, Pennsylvania) around the turn of the 18th century. The family was very involved in the local Baptist community; a few members, including Joseph Mathias (1778-1851), were prominent Baptist ministers. The family intermarried with other early Hilltown families including the Thomas and Morris families.
Brothers Thomas Mathias (1762-1806) and Joseph Mathias (1778-1851) were the children of Thomas Mathias (1711-1779) and Elizabeth Jones (1735-1821). Thomas Mathias married Jainer (Anna) with whom he had two children: Abel Mathias (d. 1816) and Ashbel Mathias (d. 1826). After Thomas Mathias died in 1806, Joseph Mathias became Ashbel Mathias' guardian.
Joseph Mathias, Minister of Hilltown Baptist Church, married Dinah Mathews (1777-1870) and had several children, including Thomas Mathias, M.S. (1807-1830), a doctor who died of small pox in Berks County in 1830 at the age of 22.
This collection consists of various materials relating to several generations of the Mathias family. It includes multiple cyphering books: Fanny Matthias' composition book, 1869, and the geometry workbooks of Joseph, Benjamin, and Thomas Matthias, 1813-1834. Financial and estate papers such as account books, receipts and invoices, estate inventories, property records, and daybooks are also included. Specifically, these papers include Thomas Matthias' estate account book and receipts, circa 1806-1810, and a 1709 deed purchase of land from Langhorne (likely Jeremiah Langhorne). The collection also includes baptismal certificates, a few letters, and several early property maps.
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. These tasks have been started since the HCI-PSAR project with an expected completion date of Spring 2014.
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
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
-
Contact Historical Society of Hilltown Township for information about accessing this collection.