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Upper Uwchlan Township Historic Commission local history collection
Notifications
Held at: Upper Uwchlan Township Historic Commission [Contact Us]140 Pottstown Pike, Chester Springs, PA, 19425
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Upper Uwchlan Township Historic Commission. 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
Upper Uwchlan Township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, was established in 1858 when it separated from Uwchlan Township. Its boundaries include the historic district of Byers Station and the Wheelen House (Fellowship Farm), a Georgian-style farmhouse built in the mid 18th century. Remaining a rural community for most of its existence, in the 1980s Upper Uwchlan started experiencing a large population boom when many families and individuals began moving to the area, attracted by its school system and suburban location proximate to Philadelphia. Today, many new subdivisions stand alongside the older homes in Upper Uwchlan.
Bibliography:
Cremers, Estelle, and Pamela Shenk. The Upper Uwchlan: A Place Betwixt and Between. Morgantown, PA: Masthof Press, 2008.
This collection contains materials relating to the people, buildings, property, organizations, and other aspects of Upper Uwchlan Township (Chester County, Pennsylvania). The collection is organized into four series: I. Manuscripts, II. Property files, III. Subject files, and IV. Subject binders.
The Manuscripts series consists of original family papers organized by family or donor name. The materials include: Dewees farm ledger, 1928-1948; Ford family deed, 1858; Bertha Mercer autograph books (2 volumes), 1925-1929; Bertha "Bert" McCardell's tax receipts journals, 1995-1997; Upper Uwchlan Township Justice of the Peace court docket, 1885-1950 (with gaps); tax collector's book, 1864; and other materials relating to residents of Upper Uwchlan Township. One of the largest groupings is Harper family materials, which include: a manuscript volume with Fetters and Acker genealogy (circa 1880); Edgefield Institute ledger (1882), teacher's monthly reports (1868), and other papers; other documents relating generally to schools and schooling; and various documents relating to the Fetters family including a few Abraham Fetters, Jr. Civil War records. There is a small quantity of photographs, principally late 19th century school class photographs and late 20th century photographs and slides of Upper Uwchlan properties, with a variety of other black and white and color photographs. There are also some loose deeds, several oral histories on audiocassette tape, and some CDs with digital versions of house photographs and some maps.
The Property files series is organized by location and includes Chester County Architectural Inventory form records executed by the Upper Uwchlan Survey Commission, 1980, as well as surveys commissioned by the Upper Uwchlan Historic Commission and executed by Robert Wise, 2001-2005. Some of the folders contain both of these forms, just one, or none. Other document types that appear in the folders include photographs, slides, photocopies of original manuscripts and property drawings, and newspaper clippings, some of which are photocopied.
The Subject files series is organized into two larger sub-groupings, People and Newspaper clippings, with additional folders pertaining to topics outside of these sub-groupings. The People sub-group contains varying amounts of information in each folder, but can include items such as request forms for records from the National Archives, photocopies of newspaper clippings and obituaries, photocopies of original manuscripts, family notes, and genealogy research. The Newspaper clippings sub-group is organized by date and includes a mix of photocopied and original newspaper clippings, 1850-2000. Additional folders in this series contain information about various other topics relating to Upper Uwchlan Township including insurance papers, roads, churches, schools, tax records and other topics.
The Subject binders series is a collection of information organized into binders by topic, such as local cemetery inventories, oral history transcripts, and copies of manuscript and printed materials.
Materials collected by the Upper Uwchlan Township Historic Commission from various sources over time.
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 Upper Uwchlan Township Historic Commission directly for more information.
People
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Upper Uwchlan Township Historic Commission
- 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 Upper Uwchlan Township Historic Commission for information about accessing this collection.