William Tilghman (1756-1827; APS 1805) was a jurist and chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He held several positions as a judge and lawyer in the Philadelphia area and was active in the American Philosophical Society. He helped form and served as the head of the Committee of History, the Moral Sciences and General Literature for the APS and was elected the President of the APS in 1824, a position he held until his death.

Benjamin Franklin's annotated copy of the first printing of the Constitution (Philadelphia: Dunlap and Claypoole, 1787).

The Great Law, or, The Body of laws of ye province of Pennsilvania territorys thereunto belonging past at an assembly at Chester als Upland the seaventh day of ye 10th month.

Born May 26, 1750, to the niece of Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Williams was a prominent merchant, scientist and soldier. Elected to the APS in 1787 as a result of his observations on temperature and barometrical readings, as well as work on sugar production, Williams had a distinguished military career highlighted by his appointment as first superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. The Jonathan Williams Papers consists of 46 letters and documents, written by or to Jonathan Williams Sr. and Jr., dealing primarily with financial and legal matters. The collection includes five letters written by Benjamin Franklin and many of the others are signed by Williams' father-in-law and brother-in-law, William and Robert Alexander.

This item includes resolutions of the New York General Assembly. It is bound with T. Forsey, "The Report of an Action of Assault, Battery and Wounding, Tried in the Supreme Court of Judicature for the Province of New-York in the term of October 1764, between Thomas Forsey, Plaintiff, and Waddel Cunningham, Defendant" (John Holt: New York, 1764).

This volume is a listing of Philadelphia individuals claiming bankruptcy, with a corresponding list of their creditors.

Peter S. Du Ponceau translated Gérard de Rayneval's "De la liberté des mers" (Paris, 1811) as an exercise, but not for publication.

John Marshall was appointed the fourth chief justice of the United States by President John Adams. In the thirty four years he served on the bench, Marshall presided over the Court's evolution into an institution with power equal to both the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government. The Marshall collection consists of manuscript drafts for 62 opinions delivered by the chief justice in the Fourth Circuit Court of the United States between 1803 and 1831. These opinions seem to be from cases heard in Richmond, VA. The collection is arranged chronologically by the court term.

Intended as a model of Jacksonian penal reform, the Eastern State Penitentiary operated in the Cherry Hill section of Philadelphia between 1829 and 1970. Designed to promote the moral reform of prisoners by imposing a regimen of silent, solitary self-reflection, the penitentiary became the purest example of the "Pennsylvania plan" of "cellular isolation." The Records of the Eastern State Penitentiary consist of seven bound volumes and a series of miscellaneous records and correspondence that document aspects of life in Jacksonian America's model prison. The collection has been organized into four series: Series I, Bound Volumes; Series II, Miscellaneous Records; Series III, Correspondence of Elizabeth Velora Elwell; and Series IV, Prisoners' Correspondence. The bound volumes contain records of admission for prisoners between 1830 and 1892 (with some gaps), three of which were kept and annotated by the Moral Instructor at the prison, Thomas Larcombe. Larcombe provided interesting comments on the "moral state" of each prisoner, in addition to data on name, age, gender and race, religious affiliation, the charges, sentence, and final disposition. The unbound materials in the collection are diverse, but include an important 70 page manuscript comprising the records of the joint commission charged with investigating management of the prison in 1835, with a partial transcript of testimony, and a series of 29 letters written to or from prisoners at Eastern State, 1845-1871, most unusually the inmate Elizabeth Velora Elwell, writing to her paramour and fellow inmate Albert Green Jackson.

These are accounts of expenditures for various legal services rendered as magistrate, as well as some miscellaneous personal accounts.

Papers of jurist Samuel Bayard (1767-1840), including a diary from his time in London as American Claims Agent; correspondence with William Bradford (1755-1795), second attorney general of the United States; and a 1778 letter from William Alexander, Lord Stirling, to Governor William Livingston of New Jersey that discusses troop deployment in that state.

These papers concern business and legal affairs, and include Price's writings on the law of real and personal property, and private wrongs. Also includes a letter to Daniel Webster.

Associates of Benjamin Franklin and his grandson William Temple Franklin, the Fox family of Philadelphia were holders of considerable property in Philadelphia during the eighteenth century and speculated extensively in lands in the northern and western parts of the state. The son of Dr. George Fox, Charles Pemberton Fox inherited the estate Champlost at which the papers of Benjamin Franklin were left in 1790. He donated the collection to the American Philosophical Society in 1840. The legal records that comprise the William Temple Frankln-Charles Pemberton Fox collection relate to real property held by members of the Fox family and to the land holdings and financial interests of George Fox's close friend, William Temple Franklin. The collection includes about 100 deeds for properties in or near Philadelphia and in Luzerne County, Pa., along with a small quantity (about 31 items) of miscellaneous correspondence addressed to George Fox by Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris, N. Cantwell Jones, Thomas Eddy, and others; and from William Constable and Sir Robert Herries and Co. (17 pieces) relating to the investments of William Temple Franklin.

These papers relate principally to Smyth's career in New Jersey before the American Revolution, and includes addresses to grand juries and their reports, and a copy of a petition to the Earl of Carlisle and its response (1778).

Jasper Yeates (1745-1817) was a lawyer and Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, one of the state's most successful colonial-era legal practitioners. After moving to Lancaster County in 1765, he became active in colonial and early federal affairs, first by supporting the Revolutionary struggle and later by serving as one of Lancaster's delegates to the State Convention of 1787, which ratified the U.S. Constitution. The Jasper Yeates Papers (1728-1910, bulk 1760-1816) consist mainly of correspondence and business and court/legal records related to the Yeates family. The bulk of this three linear foot collection reflect Yeates' personal life as husband, father, son, and friend, as well as his professional life as lawyer and judge in Pennsylvania; much of the material dated after Yeates' death was created by children and/or grandchildren.

The family correspondence of Richard and Sarah Franklin Bache on a variety of topics including references to Benjamin Franklin and his estate. There is also a family genealogy.

The Lusanna, a seventy-ton brigantine, was owned by Elisha Doane of Massachusetts, and sailed with his son-in-law Shearjashub Bourne as supercargo. She sailed from Massachusetts in 1775 at the onset of the American Revolution. On the return voyage from London in 1777 she was captured by the privateer McClary out of Portsmouth, NH. In the prize case that followed in the New Hampshire maritime court, Bourne and Doane unsuccessfully tried to defend their ship. Their appeal eventually made its way to the Continental Congress. The Lusanna Prize Case Records is a written transcript of the proceedings in Admiralty Court of the armed brigantine McClary vs. the brigantine Lusanna in the State of New Hampshire. The transcript contains the entire proceedings of the case including the libel, statements of the crew and passengers, invoices for items shipped aboard the Lusanna, bills of lading, copies of letters pertaining to the voyage and cargo, copy of the prize case against the Industry (another vessel owned by Doane captured by the British in 1775), testimony in support of the owners of the Lusanna as loyal to the United States, the decision of the court, and the appeal.

A pioneer in ethnographic and linguistic studies of the American Indian and one of the most active members of the American Philosophical Society, Peter Stephen Du Ponceau helped to establish the American Philosophical Society's reputation as one of the world's foremost centers for the study of American Indians and their languages. The Peter Stephen Du Ponceau collection consists of correspondence on legal matters, Indian linguistics, silk culture, maritime law, the American Philosophical Society, and various publications of the early nineteenth century. The collection also includes several essays by Du Ponceau, most of which deal with maritime law.

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.