Collections of interest to Hispanics

When you visit the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s webpage and read the description of what we do, you’ll find a reference to additions to our collection of documents acquired in 2002 from The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies. Although HSP has excelled in keeping and providing access to valuable documents about American colonial history, we [...]

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Hot soup on a cold day: the records of the The Kensington Soup Society

I recently finished processing a  set of records from the Kensington Soup Society (KSS).  KSS, which closed in 2007, was Philadelphia’s last neighborhood soup kitchen.  It was founded in 1844, at a time when there were other soup kitchens in the city, each one serving a particular neighborhood.  In KSS’s case, its serving boundaries extended [...]

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The saga of the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House continues…

First I should start by correcting myself a bit. In my last blog I said that the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House, U.S. objected to the idea put forth by the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House, U.K. to use theatrical presentations to tell the story and have a science lab on the upper floors of [...]

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From the Business Files of the Friends of the Benjamin Franklin House, U.S.

My first task as an HSP Archives Intern was to create a finding aid for the business files of an organization called The Friends of Benjamin Franklin House, U.S. From these files a narrative unfolds that shows the difficulty of restoring and opening an historic house museum. Not only is the physical restoration a painstaking [...]

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