Moses Moon (1754-1822) was a Bucks County, Pennsylvania resident. He spent his entire life living and working at his family's Woodbourne Estate in Bucks County as a farmer, horticulturist and surveyor. The collection consists of what Moon called his Cyphering Book, containing drawings of the solar system, and the positions of the stars dated 1772, as well as a copy of a deed with a map on the reverse from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, dated 1787.

A listing of miscellaneous manuscript maps that are not associated with any particular collections.

Plan of the ground and lots belonging to the State House. Docketing by Benjamin Franklin. Housed in its own red case (17x19.5").

This volume was made at Wilmington, Delaware, for determining the longitude, from 1 July-14 October. It records the position of selected stars and planets. Contains also: Note regarding his astronomical clock, and entries relative to his work in continuing the Mason & Dixon's line.

Grant, No. 116, to Patrick Crookshanks for 1000 acres land - Washington, Georgia, dated, signed by Edward Telfair, governor. Broadside, F. Accompanied by drawing and description of the land.

These are letters to Thomas Clarke, Isaac Roberdeau, and Jonathan Williams, Jr., about the defense of Philadelphia against possible British attack.

The notebook includes descriptions of land surveys in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, and notes in various hands on early history and settlers there. The maps include boundary descriptions, and there are copies of two deeds.

This account is dated 19 January 1797, and was read at an APS meeting on 17 February 1797. Included in the volume is a plan of a settlement near the Natches Indians, by William Dunbar (1803?).

The first volume is minutes of the commissioners for determining the line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, which was copied by George M. Justine in 1842 from an "authenticated" copy owned by Ferdinand R. Hassler. The second volume contains receipts (62 items) for money spent by the Penn family for the survey.

A mineralogist and chemist associated with the University of Pennsylvania (1822-1828), William H. Keating was a central figure in the scientific community in Philadelphia during the 1820s and 1830s. Active in the American Philosophical Society and Academy of Natural Sciences, and a founding member of the Franklin Institute, Keating was official geologist on Stephen Harriman Long's expedition to the Great Lakes in 1823 and spent three years in the late 1820s surveying the mineral resources of Mexico. The William H. Keating notebooks include three cash books (daybooks of cash expenditures, 1830-1839) and a book containing surveys of Keating lands in Potter County, most undertaken by Silas McCarty for William's father John Keating (1801-1818). The surveys associated with John Keating are an interesting record of land investment and speculation in the northern tier of Pennsylvania. William Keating's meticulous cash books provide a detailed record of his domestic expenses, philanthropic involvements (donations to the Catholic Church, the Prison Society), his reading (newspapers and books are listed individually), socializing (theatre tickets, Assembly fees), and a variety of miscellaneous expenditures ranging from purchase of a lithograph of Dugald Stewart to a table lamp from C. Cornelius. His accounts also include lists of servant's wages and wages for washerwomen.

There are several letters which concern Lukens' official position as Surveyor-general, but the bulk of the collection is the 12 small survey books (1760-1775, ca. 108 p.). There are surveys of Philadelphia, particularly near the State House, now Independence Square; for a vineyard plantation in the Northern Liberties (1769); and for lands in Lancaster and Berks Counties.

Between 1764 and 1781, the Scots surveyor George Gauld was assigned by the British Admirality to chart the waters of the Gulf Coast off British West Florida, an area that extended from New Orleans to the modern-day Florida. In 1773, Gauld submitted some of his findings to the APS, probably in hopes of having them published in the Transactions, and although these were not published, they became one of the first mansucripts entered into the Society's collections. Contains occasional brief references to Native peoples of the areas described. The Gauld manuscript also includes an extract of a letter from John Lorimer to Gauld, 1772, and a sketch of the Middle and Yellow Rivers of West Florida by Thomas Hutchins. When it was received at the APS, it was endorsed: "This long uninteresting Paper can hardly obtain a Place in the Transactions of a Philosophical Society. It should however be preserved in the Files for the Use of Historians or map makers."

This collection includes notes and an unpublished manuscript (275 pages), entitled "Journals and Note-books of Benjamin Smith Barton, 1785-1806," by Waldo L. McAtee. The manuscript includes an introduction with biographical and bibliographical notes, an annotated glossary-index, and an indexed bibliography of works referred to in the various journals. The photocopies of journals and notebooks by Barton include his survey of the boundary of western Pennsylvania and Ohio, 1785; a commonplace book, 1789; journey through New York to Niagara Falls, 1797; Pennsylvania journal, 1798; visit to Virginia, 1802 (published); Salt Pond Mountain, Virginia, 1806; notes on vertebrates and miscellany.

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.

Correspondence from Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to Thomas Birch, and Nevil Maskelyne to Charles Mason, relating to the survey, and the transits of Venus (1761,1769).

Consists of material chiefly on natural history, shells, and insects, including miscellaneous notes on conchology by Say; photostats of 6 letters from Say to Jacob Gilliams, 1819-1829, from Morristown, New Jersey; and a biographical note on Say. The drawings and impressions of shells are by Mrs. Lucy Way Sistaire Say, prepared for W. G. Binney's edition of Say's complete works on conchology, 1858; also Mrs. Say's refutation of what she considered an unfair attack in George Ord's memoir of Say. Correspondents include André Etienne Férussac, Arthur F. Gray, John Lawrence LeConte, and Charles W. Short. An additional item is a memorial volume (ca. 150 pp.), including a family genealogy and land surveys in watercolor (B Sa95f).

A compendium of natural philosophical knowledge, written in 1718-1720 by John Questebrune, chaplain to the 6th Earl of Galway. The chapters treat the various parts of the physical world (earth, water, air, and fire), plants (including a great deal on medicinal plants), animals, and the human body and soul. The volume is embellished with decorative chapter headings and pen and ink and watercolor sketches depicting the terrestrial globe, the Ptolemaic and Copernican solar systems, the phases of the moon, and the human body in dissection.

This volume is the only known copy of a manuscript probably earlier than "The History of the Dividing Line Between Virginia and North Carolina." Contains fewer Indian references and lacks interpolated information, but describes contact with Saponi and Nottoway Indians in 1728.

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.

These letters relate principally to provincial business and comment on the Indians of Pennsylvania, the French and Indian War, a survey of the Maryland-Pennsylvania boundary, and the Stamp Act. Correspondents include James Burd, Jeremiah Dixon, Joseph Galloway, Humphry Marshall, Charles Mason, Edward Shippen of Lancaster, and Edward Shippen, Jr.