Main content
King of Prussia Historical Society audiovisual 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 primarily of oral history interviews with local residents of King of Prussia, Upper Merion, or nearby areas. Most of the items are videos from the "Remember When" series, broadcast on UMGA TV (Upper Merion Township Government Access Television), and available on DVD. Dr. Carl Schultheis is the main interviewer for this series, though there are some guest interviewers featured. There are also a number of audio interviews copied from the Wolfsohn Memorial Library (now the Upper Merion Township Library) local history collection. Most of the remaining interviews in the collection were conducted by Julian Grossman, a majority of which are part of the Arts & Craft, Artist, or Business series. The audio interviews were all on audiocassette tapes but have been digitized and are available in the MP3 computer file format. An item level inventory for this collection is available on-site.
Materials collected by the King of Prussia Historical Society from various sources at various times.
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.
- 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
-
Contact King of Prussia Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.