Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the developed portions of the City of Philadelphia expanded greatly, and areas once wide open and rural were swallowed up by the growing city.  In addition, lots within existing city neighborhoods were re-purposed as community needs changed overtime.  Frequent victims of this evolving urban landscape were the city’s many cemeteries.  Whether privately owned or religiously affiliated, burial grounds that stood in the way of progress were frequently lost or relocated.  Philadelphia Memorial Park in Frazer, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia, was one destination for numerous city cemeteries during the twentieth century.

Philadelphia Memorial Park was established in 1929 as an independent burial ground.  It was created as a “no monument” cemetery, representing a shift in preferred burial ground aesthetics from the “gloomy, depressing and neglected condition [of the typical graveyard] into a beautiful garden-like park with exquisite landscape gardening and noble memorial architecture,” (Downingtown News, 1932).  In place of traditional tombstones, bronze tablets set flush with the ground were used to mark graves in order to preserve the continuity of the landscape.  The graves from at least four inner-city burial grounds were relocated to Philadelphia Memorial Park during the mid-twentieth century: the American Mechanics and United Daughters of America Cemetery, German Lutheran Cemetery, Union Burial Ground and Belvue Cemetery.

In researching this collection to write the processing plan and historical note, I learned that this is no uncommon thing — cemeteries are moved all the time, for all kinds of reasons, and it is not necessarily ancient or abandoned cemeteries being evicted.  That graves are dug up and re-buried miles away just so that a new strip mall could be built, to be frank, makes me quite sad.  Though an incredibly morbid thought, I cannot help but think that the one thing we are all guaranteed in life is eternal rest in death, and that, as it turns out, is not even a real guarantee.

The collection itself is comprised of burial and financial records pertaining to the individual burial grounds prior to their removal — obviously an excellent genealogical resource.  Some of the volumes also note cause of death.

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The Albert Cook Myers research collection of William Penn materials showcases the dedication of its creator to the research process. Spanning 81 feet and residing in 131 boxes on the shelves of the Chester County Historical Society, this collection records Myers’ attempt to produce a definitive volume of works by William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. In this quest, he spent 50 years gathering information not just on Penn, but also on Penn’s family members, associates, and other prominent Quakers. In short, if a person, place, or document had any connection whatsoever to William Penn, Myers set about finding and taking notes on it.

The information contained within this collection is fascinating on its own, but another thing that struck me as I went through processing was Myers’ copious note taking. Because Myers never learned to drive and had to rely on others to transport him to research facilities, he was determined to create thorough notes. That way, if he was unable to return to the facility he would be sure to have the information he wanted. He also never learned to type, relying instead on secretarial services to produce reports and other documents. Often his notes were recorded on one piece of paper, then cut and pasted on another sheet of paper. Whole articles or small pieces of information from numerous publications were also cut and pasted to sheets for Myers’ use. He even heavily annotated pages from some early editions of Penn’s works and glued them to other sheets of paper, which absolutely flabbergasted me when I came across them in the collection.

Although Myers was never able to complete this project, he compiled an enormous array of data about William Penn. His efforts at thorough and complete research of the topic certainly cannot be debated.

Our processors do not have a lot of time to think about their processing decisions and once those decisions are made there’s no turning back.  Not to mention, we are working with students, who are learning the art of archival processing as they go and therefore do not have a lot of experience to draw from when making decisions about arranging collections.  Even so, because of the nature of the project, we need our teams to work independently.  As such, the processing plan is a very important part of our work flow.  It is completed prior to the processors’ arrival, provides them a place to start, and guides them in their decision making as they begin to divide collections into series and subseries.

Our teams are instructed to completely read all the materials in the processing packet prior to processing.  In doing so, the teams quickly become acquainted with the collection and its creators and are made aware of the various types of records to look for and how to group them.  Additionally, through the packets students gain a sense of the historical context in which the records were created—information that they do not have enough time to uncover on their own and that we believe to be essential in understanding archives and their value.

Since the students will ultimately devote a lot more time to the collections than we can, we do allow them to adapt the processing plan as they see fit.  If they feel additional or different series are necessary to maximize the collection’s accessibility, they may make those decisions on their own.

At all the repositories I have visited thus far (there are a few more stops along the way) I have gotten quite an in depth “sneak peek” at what’s in store.  Based on my experience over the past couple of weeks, we have some exciting collections coming up that are sure to be both interesting and challenging from the perspectives of history AND minimal processing — so stay tuned!

Here are some teaser snapshots of what’s to come: