1785 diary containing notes written by William Temple Franklin. Written in the 1785 edition of Almanach des Rendez-Vous, printed in Paris.

This incomplete, partially mutilated item forms the conclusion of James Hutchinson's diary, recording a mid-winter Atlantic crossing from Europe to America.

This volume is a record of a schoolboy's life in Switzerland, with comments on his life in Passy with his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin.

This volume contains letters (a few in shorthand) relating to his pursuit of the position as principal recorder, and then, upon accomplishing this, his problems in publishing. There are sales accounts and a diary (April, 1793 to June, 1794), written while he was imprisoned in Newgate Prison, London (1793 to Jan., 1796). Included for this period is an interesting description, brought to him at Newgate by an Englishman, John Ford, who was seeking support and American contacts for his plan to take an English textile process to America: "A Manufacture of Wollen & Cotton Cloth & Without spinning or weaving," August, 1794.

This diary is an account of a voyage from Newport (R.I.) to London, with descriptions of Boston, Dover, Edinburgh, and London. There are also many references to Benjamin Franklin in the diary.

This diary records the travels of Loammi Baldwin in the Netherlands (then including Belgium), England, and France, with detailed observations and careful pen-and-ink sketches of canals and canal machinery.

This journal was kept while Shippen was a student of medicine in London under Dr. Colin McKenzie and Dr. William Hunter. Notable people mentioned are Dennys De Berdt, Mark Akenside, George Whitefield, John Fothergill, David Garrick, and Thomas Penn.

The collection contains information on Fox family speculation in western lands, two manuscript maps from the 1790's and 1830's depicting the family's holdings in northwestern Pennsylvania, and a photograph album from the 1890's documenting Chestnutwold, the Fox estate adjacent to Andalusia. Chief correspondents are Samuel and George Fox.

The Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin prepared by Isaac Minis Hays for the bicentennial of Franklin's birth in 1906 provides access to the largest portion of the Franklin Papers at the APS. The items were originally bound into volumes in roughly chronological order, with letters to Franklin preceding those from Franklin and at the end of the collection, Franklin's letters owned by the University of Pennsylvania. Each manuscript is still identified by Hays' reference numbers, which include a roman numeral refering to the original volume followed by an arabic number to identify the folio. The electronic version of the finding aid replicates Hays' calendar, including the introductory material and item-level descriptions. It has been updated to reflect corrections in the metadata, corrections of personal names, dates, and description.

After a brief career in the Congregational church, J. Peter Lesley (1819-1903) left the ministry in 1852 to work full-time as a geologist. Having gained experience in structural geology and stratigraphy with the First Pennsylvania Geological Survey (1836-1842), Lesley became an expert in the geology of coal, working for the Pennsylvania Railroad and other corporations and conducting some of the first systematic studies of the state's hydrocarbon resources. A long-time professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he was elected to the APS in 1856, serving variously as its librarian, secretary, and vice president, and he was selected as Director of the Second Pennsylvania Geological Survey (1875-1889). The Lesley Papers include letters to and from Peter Lesley and his wife, Susan on geology, coal and iron mining, abolition, educational reform, organized charity, and Unitarianism. The collection offers important insight into academic and applied geology in late 19th century Pennsylvania, the development of the coal and iron industries, as well as into the Lesleys' progressive social and intellectual milieu. It is divided into three series: Lesley's general correspondence, his correspondence with his brother Joseph, and microfilms of Lesley's research notes.