A Sachem and Civil War adjutant to Ulysses Grant, Ely Samuel Parker was an important figure in the Seneca Indian nation during the first half of the nineteenth century. Trained as an engineer, Parker was deeply involved in the Senecas' land disputes with the Ogden Land Company and he played an important role in interpreting Seneca culture for a white audience, most notably as a consultant for Lewis Henry Morgan. Collected by Arthur C. Parker, the Ely Samuel Parker Papers include correspondence, manuscripts, and printed materials relating primarily to Seneca affairs, history, language, and culture, as well as politics, education, engineering, and the Civil War. Among Parker's correspondents were Henry Clay, Millard Fillmore, Henry M. Flagler, Lewis Henry Morgan, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Daniel Webster, and Asher Wright. Several letters relate to Parker's service as engineer of public buildings in Galena, Illinois, and to his Masonic activities. Among the noteworthy items in the collection are several essays on Seneca history and culture, a fragment of Parker's diary, 1847, and a significant quantity of material on the Seneca language assembled by Asher Wright.

Letters from two young Christian Onondaga Indians, Thomas La Fort and Jameson L. Thomas, about their efforts to get an education so they might help their tribe; from Chief David Hill, leader of the Christian Onondagas, asking for financial and political aid when the New York state legislature refused money for a school on the Onondaga reservation, and when the Christian and pagan Indians sought to divide the reservation between them.

A product of the distinctive culture of reform in antebellum Philadelphia, William Parker Foulke was the scion of the old elite who put a conservative stamp on social change. Trained as an attorney, Foulke spent much of his adult life engaging his deep amateur interest in natural history and mental philosophy and devoting himself to a variety of civic and philanthropic causes, including the colonization of formerly enslaved persons, penal reform, and cultural institutions in his native Philadelphia. The Foulke Papers are the product of the diverse social and intellectual interests of the Philadelphia attorney and philanthropist William Parker Foulke. Consisting primarily of correspondence, notes, and essays, the collection touches on Foulke's many interests. The collection includes numerous lectures delivered by Foulke along with material on the Lancaster County Prison, New York Prison Association, and the Philadelphia Society For Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons; notebooks concerning prisons and prisoners, including a 1846-1852 diary, and a listing of prisoners, their race, age, crime, sentence, and observations; a diary concerning the American Colonization Society (1852); a copy of an arctic diary (1853-1854) by John Wall Wilson, in the hand of Isaac Israel Hayes, which recounts much of the journey aboard the brig Advance, commanded by Elisha Kent Kane. There is also a list of buildings (1820-1841) designed by John Haviland, and material on the American Academy of Music, Philadelphia.

Robert Woodruff was secretary to John Anstey, Loyalists' Claims Commissioner. This journal relates his travels with John Anstey. He describes the towns he visited, and comments on episodes of the American Revolution and on the Federal Convention and state ratifying conventions. The journal covers a trip through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Georgia. He and Anstey spent a night at Mount Vernon in 1786. Mentions B. Franklin, G. Washington, APS Hall. Also refers to Five Nations country, Georgia's warfare with Creek Indians, and Chief McGillivray. For identification, see G. Washington's Diary, Dec.11, 1786.

A physician, natural historian, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815) was one of the central figures in Philadelphia's early national scientific establishment. Having received his medical training in European universities, Barton was appointed Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1789, lecturing on botany, materia medica, natural history. A prolific author, he established his reputation as one of the nation's preeminent botanists through his botanical text book The Elements of Botany (1803), but his contribtions to zoology, ethnology, and medicine were equally noteworthy. Barton's monograph on the "fascinating faculty" of the rattlesnake and his efforts in historical linguistics (New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, 1798) were widely read, and his Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (1804-1809) was one of the nation's first medical journals and an important outlet for natural historical research. The Barton Papers offer a comprehensive view of the professional work of Benjamin Smith Barton from the time of his return to the United States in 1789 until his death. The collection is divided into five series: Correspondence, Subject Files, Bound Volumes, Graphic Materials, and Printing Plates. The collection includes a particularly valuable series of botanical, medical, and natural historical drawings collected by Barton for research, reference, and publication. Among the many artists represented are William Bartram, Frederick Pursh, Pierre Turpin, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

The correspondence is principally to Zaccheus Collins (1810-1840), with bills, receipts, and notes on Rafinesque vs. Parker; letters from Collins, L.A. Tarascon, Lewis C. Beck, John Torrey, and Charles W. Short (1817-1835); and miscellaneous correspondence and documents relating to Rafinesque vs. Parker, with an account of the Felician Society of Feliciana County, Illinois (1820). The writings are chiefly on botanical topics, and include notes and essays on Indians, Blacks, grapes and wine-making, banking, and speculation. Rafinesque's growing interest in Indian antiquities, linguistics, and history is apparent in letters after 1820. There is an account of Rafinesque's scientific travels in North America and southern Europe (1800-1832), and a bibliography. The botanical notes include descriptions of specimens collected by Lewis and Clark, Patrick Gass, and Henry Muhlenberg.

Journal ("Journal historique concernant l'établisement des français à la Louisianne; tiré des mémoires de Mrs. D'Iberville & de Bienville") from first French contact through failure of settlement at St. Bernard, commanded by La Harpe. Includes brief essays at end, including a summary of various theories of the origins of the American Indians.

With a covering letter from the author to Isaiah Thomas, 1793. The manuscript was published by Thomas at Worcester, 1794.

Kept during the Lewis and Clark Expedition, this diary notes distances covered and a draft of suggestions for routes for the fur trade.

The Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes, of the character & customs of the Chippeway Indians & of incidents connected with the treaty of Fond du Lac... to which is super added a vocabulary of the Algic, or Chippeway language... is a record of a journey undertaken by Thomas L. McKenney and Lewis Cass, from Washington, D.C., to Fond du Lac, Wisc., to negotiate a treaty with the Chippewa and other Indians. McKenney, the Superindenant of Indian Affairs, includes an account of travel on the Great Lakes, and more memorably, a description of the "character" and customs of the Chippewa Indians, an account of the treaty of Fond du Lac, and a vocabulary of the Algic or Chippewa language. The manuscript, a fair copy of the original sent to a London publisher, is illustrated throughout with watercolor sketches of scenes and persons. It was originally published in Baltimore in 1827.

These documents are principally of Pennsylvania interest, 1757-1809, including letters to Richard I. Manning from John C. Calhoun, Marquis de Lafayette, George McDuffie, and William Wirt. There are also letters of Clement C. Biddle, James Buchanan, Francis J. Grund, James Madison, Timothy Pickering, and William H. Seward. In addition, there are several musical scores (n.d.) and 19 cancelled checks (1861-1871) drawn by Ticknor and Fields in Boston, to the order of various American authors.

Founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, the American Philosophical Society was the first learned society in the United States. For over 250 years, the Society has played an important role in American cultural and intellectual life. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the Society fulfilled the role of a national academy of science, national library and museum, and even patent office. Early members of the Society included Thomas Jefferson, David Rittenhouse, Benjamin Rush, Stephen Peter Du Ponceau, George Washington, and many other figures prominent in American history. The Archives of the American Philosophical Society consists of 192.25 linear feet of material, organized into thirteen record groups dating back to 1743. The Society's archives extensively documents not only the organization's historical development but also its role in American history and the history of science and technology.

An extensive family collection, the Vaux Family Papers center around the lives of George Vaux V (1721-1803), George Vaux VII (1779-1836), and George Vaux VIII (1832-1915), their business partners, siblings, wives, and children, and encompasses the extended Vaux family of Warders, Sansoms, Heads, Graffs, Morrises, Cressons, and Mayberrys. The collection includes correspondence, financial accounts, receipts, business records, journals, diaries, photographs, and legal documents.

An early settler and prominent citizen in the Moravian heartland near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Timothy Horsfield was named justice of the peace when Northampton County was formed out of Bucks in 1752, and was one of those given responsibility for the defence of the local white and Christian Indian populations during the French and Indian War. The Horsfield Papers offer a window onto the tumultuous history of northeastern Pennsylvania during the 1750s and 1760s. Comprised largely of correspondence and related documents between Horsfield, William Parsons, and provincial and military authorities, the collection includes important information on the Native tribes' actions (previously described as "Indian assaults") in the region in 1756 and 1757 and the military and diplomatic response of settlers.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were explorers. This collection contains the manuscript journals kept by Lewis and Clark on their travels to the source of the Missouri River and across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. There are interlineations throughout by Nicholas Biddle, who published his narrative "History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark" (1814).

Though less well known than their peers Lewis and Clark, William Dunbar and George Hunter played an important role in the early scientific exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. While the original goal of organizing a southern counterpart to the Corps of Discovery proved overly ambitious, Dunbar and Hunter provided important geographic information for future explorations and gave the first scientific description of the Hot Springs of Arkansas and Ouachita Mountains. The four surviving journals of George Hunter provide engaging accounts of travel in the Ohio and Mississippi Valley in 1796, 1802, and 1809, and include the most interesting record of the expedition to the Hot Springs of Arkansas in 1804-1805, complete with his detailed notes on natural history and meteorology. The volumes also contain various references to relations with the Delaware, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Osage Indians. The APS owns a contemporary copy of Hunter's journal ("Journal up the Red and Washita Rivers with William Dunbar"; Mss.917.6.Ex7), from which extracts were printed in Thomas Jefferson, Message... Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the Missouri (New York, 1806), and which is described by Isaac J. Cox, "An Early Explorer of the Louisiana Purchase," APS Library Bulletin 1946: 73. The journals were edited by John F. McDermott and published in APS Transactions 53 (1963).

The papers include miscellaneous letters, letterbooks, books, certificates, and diplomas of various members of the Muhlenberg family. Among them are photostats of letters and papers of General John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg and officers of the Continental Army on military affairs in the Southern Department during the American Revolution (1772-1804); photostats of letters to Albert Gallatin, Nathanael Greene, Edward Hand, Winthrop Sargent, Baron von Steuben, William Alexander, and George Washington; photostat of General Muhlenberg's journal of trips to the Ohio (1784, 1797); photostats of letters and notes of Gotthilf H. E. Muhlenberg, including a diary kept at Halle (1771) and extracts of thirty letters to Stephen Elliott of Beaufort and Charleston, South Carolina (1808-1815); photostats of letters of Henry A. Muhlenberg about his biography of General Muhlenberg (1848-1849); and photostats of letters of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711-1787). Also included is an original letterbook of Peter Muhlenberg, paymaster of the United States Army, kept at Augusta and Savannah, Georgia (1836-1842). Henry Muhlenberg's notebooks (1784-1813), written in Latin or German script, in a small hand, includes a wealth of botanical observations, with a focus on Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Henry Muhlenberg journals are a record of daily occurrences, with many features of a commonplace book, containing prescriptions, notes of questions asked candidates for the Lutheran ministry, and the plan of a barn. There is also a biographical account of Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711-1787).

The Thomas Jefferson papers contain a large number of correspondence both to and from Jefferson, as well as various other material related to American Revolutionary War and Early Republic. Includes correspondence with Patrick Henry, Charles Willson Peale, Richard Henry Lee, Horatio Gates, David Rittenhouse, Robert Patterson