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King of Prussia Historical Society local history collection
Notifications
Held at: King of Prussia Historical Society [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the King of Prussia 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
King of Prussia is a village located in Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Named after an 18th century inn, today King of Prussia is largely known as home to office buildings and one of the largest shopping malls in America, the King of Prussia Mall.
Settled by Welsh immigrants in the early 1700s, the area known today as King of Prussia was originally called Reesville, after the Rees family, who owned a large portion of the land in the area. The Rees family owned and operated a tavern called the King of Prussia Inn in the second half of the 18th century. Though there are several stories as to the origin of the name, many believe it is named after Frederick II (Frederick the Great), who was the King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.
This collection consists of file cabinets of research materials and a digital collection of scanned items, most of which are photographs.
The file cabinets contain newspaper clippings, research articles, photocopies of primary-source documents, event programs, newsletters, and some other ephemera. Topics include historic properties, genealogy, churches, cemeteries, and various other local history subjects. The collection is organized alphabetically by topic. Some folders do not yet have materials in them, but the Society plans to add to the collection over time. A list of subject headings for the collection is available on-site.
The digital collection consists of over 500 scans of items, some of which are owned by the Society, but many of which are not. The scanned items are mostly photographs; there are also some scanned pamphlets, newspaper clippings, postcards, and other materials. Most of the materials date from the second half of the 20th century to the present, although there are some early photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many photographs depict buildings and landscapes, although some people and organizations are also represented. An inventory listing for the scanned items is available on-site.
Materials collected at various times from various sources by the King of Prussia Historical Society.
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 King of Prussia Historical Society directly for more information.
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- King of Prussia Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Sarah Leu 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 King of Prussia Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.