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Frances Sausser papers
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Held at: Radnor Historical Society [Contact Us]113 West Beech Tree Lane, Wayne, PA, 19087
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Radnor 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
Frances Middleton Hughs was born in Wayne, Delaware County, Pennsylvania in 1882. Her father, William Davis Hughs (1846-1934), owned a tannery in Philadelphia but had deep family roots in the area. Her mother, Kate Frances Corrie, also came from local stock through her maternal lineage. Frances had two sisters and one brother. During their childhood, Wayne was a community centered around two summer hotels, but suburbanization spearheaded by Drexel & Childs soon blossomed.
In 1909 Frances married Wallace N. Smith (1879-1911), son of a property agent for by Drexel & Childs. After Smith's untimely death, Frances worked as a manager at hotels in Mount Airy in Philadelphia and Cape May, New Jersey.
Frances re-married in 1927 to Malcolm Grenville Sausser (1888-1960), whom she knew from her childhood. A World War I veteran, he spent most of his life working for the Philadelphia Electric Company. The couple moved to Haverford and then to Wayne in the late 1930s, living near Frances' sisters. Frances and Malcolm had no children, but she was devoted to her only niece, Elizabeth Katherine Scott (Heilner).
Frances was passionate about her own family genealogy and local history in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Inspired by the historical events of World War II, she decided to organize an historical society in Radnor following the model of the nearby Chester County Historical Society. The first meeting of the Radnor Historical Society was held in 1947. Frances served on the Board of Directors from the time the Society was started until her death.
Frances was involved with the Republican Women, the League of Women Voters, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, although those organizations were not as near to her heart as were the Radnor Historical Society or St. Mary's Episcopal Church, of which Frances was a member along with her sisters. Soon after the deaths of Malcolm, both of her sisters, and her niece, Frances passed away in 1963.
Bibliography:
Dallett, Francis James. "Frances Hughs Sausser (1882-1963): Founder of the Radnor Historical Society." The Bulletin of Radnor Historical Society, volume II, no. 4 (Spring 1964).
This collection includes a large amount of correspondence, 1931-1962, mostly regarding Mrs. Sausser's genealogy research; some family documents from the 19th and 20th centuries; photographs, in the form of cabinet cards and cartes de visite, circa 1865-1900; several notebooks of genealogy research on the Hughs, Sausser, Cash, Leacock, Evans, Davis, and Middleton families; and a smattering of 20th century financial material. The collection documents the life of an early to mid-twentieth century upper-middle class woman, her family genealogy, and the genealogy research process. A detailed inventory of the collection's contents is available on-site.
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 Radnor Historical Society directly for more information.
People
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Radnor Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories using data provided by the Radnor Historical Society
- 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 Radnor Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.