US-Pennsylvania Archives - Genealogical.com

“Famous for inventing Lies”: Pennsylvania Runaways, 1784-1790

Barry Chodak — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:17:54 +0000

For many years, Mr. Boyle has assembled the names of servants whose runaway status was advertised in colonial and Revolutionary-era American newspapers. Mr. Boyle has produced multiple volumes of runaway collections for Pennsylvania, as well as Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and New England. The Pennsylvania book at hand marks the first collection of runaways based on newspaper ads placed following the Treaty of Paris of 1783 that concluded the American Revolution.

The runaway ads abstracted for this new volume are more diverse than have appeared in previous ones. For instance, multiple ads for slave and Native American runaways appear, and they are identified by race and surname (when available). The Pennsylvania Slave Act, passed on March 19, 1780, which was the first extensive abolition legislation in the western hemisphere, likely encouraged some African Americans to seek their freedom in Pennsylvania. The act stopped the importation of slaves into the state, required all slaves to be registered, and established that all children born in the state were free, regardless of race or parentage. Many of the newspaper ads provide distinctive physical features of the escapees, such as “a slow hobbling gait” or “his feet remarkably deformed,” or “both his arms are marked with the letters W. H.” As he has with previous books, Mr. Boyle has included ads placed by men whose spouses “eloped” from them for one reason or another.

Mr. Boyle’s transcriptions of the runaway ads, taken from twenty-eight different newspapers (including papers from Rhode Island to Virginia, as well as Pennsylvania), provide valuable demographic information, giving name, age, sex, height, place of origin, clothing, occupation, speech, physical imperfections, and sometimes personal vignettes. Individuals whose very existence would have been hidden from us in late 18^th-century newspapers.

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Lost History of Stolen Children: An Epic Poem

Marian Hoffman — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 12:38:32 +0000

In what is quite possibly the first epic poem in the English language since the 19th century, Richard Hayes Phillips has discovered and recounted the stories of kidnapped children whose survival itself was heroic. The author is a long-time songwriter and folksinger in the Scottish and Irish tradition and is a published author with three historical reference books to his credit. He has both the skills and the material for such an undertaking. The books, known informally as the White Slave Children Trilogy, identify by name more than 5,000 white children kidnapped from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Massachusetts and sold into slavery in Maryland and Virginia, c. 1660-1720. These were not indentured servants. These were children without indentures–that is, without a contract–taken against their will. They were sentenced to servitude by the County Courts. Their names and ages are on the record. The younger the child, the longer the sentence.

The books track the movements of 170 white slave ships, identify with a high degree of certainty the parents of 1,400 children, and reveal what became of 200 survivors. The author has subsequently compiled records of kidnapped children sold in Pennsylvania and has traced the migration of dozens of runaways and their descendants through the Appalachian Mountains.

The epic poem is divided into 75 passages, in lyric poetry, with rhyme and meter. Some of the passages are, or will become, folk songs. The White Slave Children Trilogy, published in paperback by Genealogical Publishing Company, is also available in a hard-bound, cloth cover, stitched page edition directly from the author.

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Genealogy at a Glance: Pennsylvania Genealogy Research. Updated Edition

Marian Hoffman — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 18:59:05 +0000

Originally written in 2012 by the late John T. Humphrey, an award-winning author and renowned genealogist specializing in Pennsylvania and German research, Genealogy at a Glance: Pennsylvania Genealogy Research provides a comprehensive overview of the topics essential to Pennsylvania genealogy, from settlement background and record sources to Internet sites and libraries. In just four pages of text–specially laminated for heavy use–Mr. Humphrey managed to encapsulate 300 years of Pennsylvania genealogy by striking all the right notes, building on his formidable experience as an expert on family history in the Keystone State.

This is no small feat since there are several things about Pennsylvania genealogy that are radically different from other states. First, with respect to religion and ethnicity, Pennsylvania was the most diverse colony in British North America; second, in 1790 it was the most populous state in the country; and third, it was the second most populous state in the United States for more than a century–all of which bring an unexpected level of difficulty to the task.

This Updated Edition of Pennsylvania Genealogy Research contains Humphrey’s original rich and detailed text but with updated URLs and source citations, and the addition of some online indexes and databases that became available after this work was originally published. It provides all the basic instruction you need to proceed with your Pennsylvania genealogy research, focusing on key record sources and materials for further reference and finishing with a summing up of the best record repositories and websites. For Pennsylvania genealogy, these may be the best four pages you’ll ever use.

An older edition of this work is available as an eBook at https://genealogical.com/store/genealogy-at-a-glance-pennsylvania-genealogy-research/.

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Index to Seamen’s Protection Certificate Applications, Port of Philadelphia, 1824-1861

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:25:36 +0000

This book in an index of 18,354 names compiled from original applications for Seamen’s Protection Certificates (SPC) filed at the Port of Philadelphia between 1824 and 1861. As a group, seamen were often missed at census time; consequently the SPC application may be the only record available for many 18th-century persons who served in the American merchant marine. The index gives the name of the seaman, date of application, age, race, and state or country of birth. Additional information can be found in the SPC applications themselves, as they contain references to the seaman’s place of birth, physical features, and, where applicable, place of naturalization or facts concerning manumission.

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Index to Seamen’s Protection Certificate Applications, Port of Philadelphia, 1796-1823

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:25:36 +0000

Seamen’s Protection Certificates were authorized by Congress in 1796 to identify American merchant seamen as citizens of the United States and, as such, entitled to protection against impressment at sea. This work is an index to the names of merchant seamen who made application for a Seamen’s Protection Certificate (SPC) at the Port of Philadelphia between 1796 and 1823 and is a companion volume to the index to SPC applications filed between 1824 and 1861 which was compiled by Mrs. Dixon and published by Clearfield Company in 1994 (see Item 9067). The names of 14,397 seamen appear in this volume, and each is identified according to the date of the SPC application, age, race, and state or country of birth. Since seamen were unlikely to own land and often were missed at census time, the SPC application may be the only record available for many 18th-century persons who served in the American merchant marine.

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Old Westmoreland

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:23:00 +0000

Westmoreland County was established as Pennsylvania’s eleventh county in 1773. Constituting most of southwestern Pennsylvania at its inception, it included the counties of present-day Westmoreland, Fayette, Greene and Washington, parts of Allegheny and Beaver counties south of the Ohio River, about two-thirds of the county of Indiana, and one-third of the county of Armstrong. Written in a clear, accessible style, Hassler’s Old Westmoreland was the first effort to render a coherent account of the Revolutionary War in western Pennsylvania, which essentially comprised the operations in the great transmontane region centering on Fort Pitt from 1775 to 1783. Unlike the events in the eastern theater of the Revolution, most of the battles in Westmoreland County pitted Pennsylvania Patriots against the Iroquois, Senecas, Tuscarawas, and other indigenous peoples allied with the British along the frontier. These momentous and often horrific encounters, as well as the evolution of the Patriot cause, are narrated in detail in vignettes about the [Patriot] Association of Westmoreland, Flight of the Pittsburgh Tories, Massacre of Wyoming, Sullivan’s Expedition, the Destruction of Coshocton, George Rogers Clark in Western Pennsylvania, Planning Another Campaign Against Sandusky, the Peace Journey of Ephraim Douglass, and much more. Mr. Hassler’s research was conducted from primary and secondary sources available to him at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and he has listed his authorities at the beginning of his volume for all to see or double-check.

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The Revolution on the Upper Ohio, 1775-1777

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:23:53 +0000

Based upon the famous Draper Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society, this transcription of original sources was conceived as a sequel to the Society’s volume on Lord Dunmore’s War of 1774. The documents selected by Thwaites and Kellogg pick up the story in March 1775 and continue through May 1777, essentially the first two years of the American Revolution. The sources, while not forming a continuous narrative, nonetheless shed light on the principal incidents and personalities (Matthew Arbuckle, William McKee, George Morgan, the Delaware chief White Eyes, and the Seneca chief White Mingo) of importance along the broad frontier that extended from the Greenbrier region of Virginia to Kittanning on the Upper Allegheny. The focus of the documents is on the defense of the American border while it was still being undertaken by the militia of the western counties. The volume closes with the transfer of the command of Fort Pitt to General Hand-an officer of the Continental army-signifying a milestone in American military history and in the history of westward expansion. In these pages the reader will learn about daily life on the frontier; massacres and other atrocities; the reactions of Americans in the West to news of the Revolution in the East; daring missions to re-arm the militia; plots and counter-plots hatched by the British, Spanish, Patriots, and the regional Indian tribes (Creeks, Shawnees, Delawares, Ottawas, Senecas); and the crucial Treaty of Pittsburgh of September 1775 agreed to by the colonists and a large Indian delegation. The net effect of the latter was to free up a number of frontiersmen to fight in the eastern campaign of the Revolution and, perhaps more importantly, to open up Kentucky and by extension the western territory to greater settlement by Americans. While not a genealogical volume in the true sense of the term, The Revolution on the Upper Ohio, 1775-1777 allows us to place many individuals-any one of whom is easily found in the detailed index at the end of this intriguing book-on the frontier during the two years under investigation.

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Frontier Retreat on the Upper Ohio, 1779-1781

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:23:56 +0000

This collection of original documents chronicles two critical years of the Revolutionary War along the western frontier of the United States. Originally published as Volume V in the distinguished Draper Series of the Wisconsin Historical Society, the documents were selected by Louise Phelps Kellogg, a leading authority on frontier history at the time of the book’s original publication. Readers are encouraged to read Mrs. Kellogg’s instructive historical Introduction which elucidates the events chronicled in the documents. The central figure in the book is Col. Daniel Brodhead, the commandant at Fort Pitt. At the outset, Brodhead is relishing his victories over the western Indians in the vicinity of the fort and longing to invade the country of the Five Nations. Circumstances would conspire to frustrate the colonel from achieving his objective. Probably his greatest accomplishment was squelching a large Loyalist uprising in 1780. At the end of the day, his ambitions, repressive treatment of the civilian population, and questionable ethics combined would set back the American cause on the frontier between 1779 to 1781.

Most of the action described in the correspondence and other documents unfolds in the frontier communities of Fort Pitt, Fort Vincennes, Detroit, Wheeling, and other places in western Pennsylvania, southwestern Virginia, and Kentucky. Genealogists should savor the accounts of the remarkable conditions under which their frontier ancestors were forced to live. They will also find numerous references to the thousands of settlers who flocked into the region at this time, despite the threat of Indian reprisal. The comprehensive index at the back of the work makes it easy to find them.

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The Colonial Clergy of the Middle Colonies

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:22:00 +0000

The Colonial Clergy of the Middle Colonies is an annotated alphabetical list of approximately 1,250 colonial clergymen who settled in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the annotations furnishing such useful genealogical information as place and date of birth and death, names of parents, college of matriculation, date of ordination, denomination, names of parishes, with dates, in which tenure was held, and a variety of similar matter.

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Names of Persons Who Took the Oath of Allegiance to the State of Pennsylvania Between the Years 1777 and 1789

gpcdevel — Fri, 03 May 2019 20:22:07 +0000

This invaluable list of close to 2,000 persons who signed the Revolutionary oath of allegiance in Philadelphia gives the name of signer, the actual date of signing, and, where known, the occupation and residence of the signer. In many instances, the signer previously resided in another of the Thirteen Colonies, and this as well as his European origins are mentioned.

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