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Montgomery Township Historical Society local history collection
Notifications
Held at: Montgomery Township Historical Society [Contact Us]P.O. Box 678, Montgomeryville, PA, 18936
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Montgomery Township 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
Montgomery Township, on the eastern edge of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, was settled by Welsh immigrants in the 1680s and formally established in 1714. It was primarily a farming community for most of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Bibliography:
Montgomery Township Historical Society. "Rooted in History: Montgomery Township." October 2000. Accessed August 21, 2012. http://www.knappfarm.org/?page_id=257
This collection includes various materials relating to the history of Montgomery Township and its inhabitants, organizations, and buildings. Materials represented include clippings, research notes, property maps, family genealogies, photographs, several audiocassettes, and a small amount of original family papers and organizational records. Most of the materials are organized into newspaper clippings files, property files, or people files.
Newspaper clippings dating from 1988 to 2012 make up about half of this collection. Some of the clippings are organized by subject or year, but a large portion of the clippings are unprocessed. The clippings include articles on local people, houses, government, businesses, and events (such as the opening of Route 202) in Montgomery Township.
The property files consist of research notes, photocopies of deeds, property maps, photographs, and other documents relating to particular properties and the genealogies of their owners. There are also some files with original photographs of properties, circa 1988-2012.
The people files include handwritten research notes, family genealogies, photocopies of related documents, and materials about the homes of specific persons. Of special interest are two folders of original papers of James Hirokawa, a farmer for Campbell's Soup in Montgomery Township. Hirokawa was in a Japanese internment camp during World War II and bought the land in Montgomery Township after he was released. The papers, dating from 1943 to 1973, include correspondence, tax records, a financial ledger, and papers relating to his farm.
In addition to the newspaper clippings, property, and people series, this collection contains photographs, audiocassettes, reports, and local organization records. Most of the photographs depict properties in the township (chiefly exteriors with some interior shots) taken circa 1990-2012. There are also some class photographs and other miscellaneous pictures. There are eight audiocassettes, 1989-1996, which contain recordings of oral histories from local residents. There are several reports, including an Historic Structure Report and an Historic American Building Survey, in the collection. Of special interest are records from local organizations, including the first minute book of the Montgomery Reading Circle (1877-1881), a Montgomery Literary and Musical Society minute book (1892-1894), a teacher's grade book (1905), and Eureka Post Office records (post master's account books, 1936-1942, and blank forms and letter head from National Air Mail Week, 1938).
Materials collected by the Montgomery Township Historical Society over time.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2011-2012 as part of a pilot 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 Montgomery Township Historical Society directly for more information.
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Montgomery Township Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Michael Gubicza 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 Montgomery Township Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.