Family and legal papers of the Wilson and Houston families. Includes wills, deeds, legal papers, estate papers, and correspondence. The collection covers the Earl, Salisbury, and Leacock Township area.
This collection contains the legal and personal papers of Judge Henry G. Long. The first ten boxes contain notes of argument and notes of testimony for civil and criminal cases. The remaining papers include receipts for local businesses and services, accounts, documents relating to turnpikes, speeches, stock certificates, deeds, correspondence, and petitions.
Preferred Citation: Title or description of item, date (day, month, year), Judge Henry G. Long Collection (MG0283), Box #, Folder #, LancasterHistory, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Folders 1-120, gift of The Long Home, 19 January 2001. Folders 121-126, purchased from dealer, October 2013. Folder 127 purchased from The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., August 2014.
The items in Folders 121-126 were originally part of the collection at The Long Home, but were separated from the rest of the collection and purchased at auction by the dealer who sold them to LancasterHistory.
Access Conditions / Restrictions
Restrictions are noted at the item level.
Copyright
Collection may not be photocopied. Please direct questions to Research Center Staff at research@lancasterhistory.org.
Permission for reproduction and/or publication must be obtained in writing from LancasterHistory.
Credit
Courtesy of LancasterHistory, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Other Numbers
MG-283
Other Number
MG-283
Classification
MG0283
Description Level
Fonds
Custodial History
Boxes 1-15 processed by JM, finding aid prepared by HST. Added to database 7 November 2017.
The Paul A. Mueller, Jr. Collection contains a deed for property in Lancaster Borough, an early collection of recipes, a receipt book for the Hamilton Lots, a valentine, stock certificate books for the New Process Steel Corporation, and Civil War letters. The Honorable Paul A. Mueller, Jr. is a descendant of the Zahm, Shreiner, and Cochran families on his mother's side. The items in this collection were passed down through the family for several generations.
Admin/Biographical History
Klein, Huffnagle, and Mussertown
The deed shows the sale of property in Mussertown by innkeepers Leonard and Rosina Klein to Peter Huffnagle. Leonard (1725-1793) married Amalia Rosina Waidlin (1732-1795) at Warwick, Lancaster County in December 1749. At that time he was a saddler in Lancaster. Although they did not have children, they were sponsors at several baptisms at the Moravian Church and Trinity Lutheran Church, both in Lancaster. Peter Huffnagle (1746-1806) and his wife, Charlotte, had their children baptized at the First Reformed Church in Lancaster. They were also buried in that churchyard. Mussertown was laid out in 1760 by John Musser, and was later added onto by Henry Musser. Its original boundaries were the streets now called Church, Strawberry, Locust, and Rockland.
Hamilton Lots
In 1730, Andrew Hamilton, a skilled lawyer, purchased a tract of land in the newly incorporated Lancaster County and convinced the commissioners to place the county seat within his holdings. Queen Street and King Street run through that tract. James Hamilton (1710-1783) acquired 500 acres of land from his father in 1734, and started selling lots by 1735. Although Hamilton sold the lots, he imposed ground-rents so tenants had to pay for the right to occupy and improve the land that they owned. Tenants were also required to build dwellings on their property within two years and to meet certain building specifications. He continued to acquire and sell lots until 1773. Ground-rents were still being collected on the Hamilton Lots after World War II.
Zahm and Shreiner
Godfried Zahm was a brushmaker in Lancaster. His son, Michael (d.1883), learned the brushmaking business from his father and then learned the watchmaking and jewelry business from his brother-in-law, Martin Shreiner, Jr. (1767-1866). Godfried's daughter, Maria, married Martin Shreiner who is best remembered as a Lancaster clockmaker. Maria kept a trimming shop on North Queen Street in Lancaster.
Cochran and New Process Steel Corporation
Harry B. Cochran, great-grandfather of Paul A. Mueller, Jr., was the president of New Process Steel Corporation in 1916. New Process Steel Co. began as New Process Steel Wire Manufacturing Co. and was renamed in 1907. This manufacturer of drill rods and special steel shapes became a subsidiary of General Motors Corporation in 1919. It is significant that Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. owned stock in the New Process Steel Corporation in 1916. Sloan was president of Hyatt Roller Bearing Company when it merged with the United Motors Corporation in 1916. He then became president of United Motors which merged with General Motors Corporation in 1918. Sloan was president and CEO of General Motors from 1923-1946.
Shand, William and Dean Keller. 1965. "Twentieth Century Industrial Development of Lancaster." Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 69: 151-162.
Wood, Stacy B. C. 1994. "Martin Shreiner: from Clocks to Fire Engines." Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society 96: 114-137.
Notes
Preferred Citation: Title or description of item, date (day, month, year), Paul A. Mueller, Jr. Collection (MG0360), Folder #, LancasterHistory, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Access Conditions / Restrictions
No restrictions.
Copyright
Collection may not be photocopied. Please direct questions to Research Center Staff at research@lancasterhistory.org.
Permission for reproduction and/or publication must be obtained in writing from LancasterHistory.
Credit
Courtesy of LancasterHistory, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Other Numbers
MG-360
Other Number
MG-360
Classification
MG0360
Description Level
Fonds
Custodial History
Folders 1-9 cataloged in 2005. Folder 10 cataloged in 2009. Added to database 7 September 2017.
This collection contains the papers of Lloyd Mifflin, including diaries, his poetry, typescripts, galleys with marginal notes, Mifflin family material, and a scrapbook of newspaper clippings. Lloyd Mifflin was a poet and painter from Columbia, Pa. He is best known as a writer of sonnets, publishing over 500.
Admin/Biographical History
Lloyd Mifflin (1846-1921), artist of landscape and portraiture, was also "America's greatest sonneteer." He was born and lived much of his life in Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where he was free to wander the banks of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries.
His father, J. Houston Mifflin, of English Quaker descent, was Lloyd's first teacher in drawing and sketching. His mother, Elizabeth A. Heise, came from German heritage. She was born in Columbia and died when Lloyd was very young. His father, a kind and patient man, noted that Lloyd was a rather weak child and provided equestrian and water sports to improve his health.
Lloyd was taught in the public schools in Columbia, including the Washington Classical Institute. The Mifflin family supported local education by bequeathing two houses from their estate, the cottage known as "Norwood" and the grand house, "Cloverton," as well as the estate itself. The school district annually planted a flower on his birthday, September 15, and read one of his sonnets, "A Picture of My Mother."
At the age of 14, Lloyd undertook drawing and sketching with his father. He also had Thomas Moran as an instructor in painting and worked with Isaac Williams of Philadelphia for a short time. In 1869, he traveled to Europe where he studied with Henry Herzog at Dusseldorf, Germany. His adventures also took him to Italy, France, England, and Scotland. He returned to Columbia from Europe and continued painting scenes from along the Susquehanna-from Cooperstown, NY to the Chesapeake Bay. As did most other painters of the time, he earned money from portraiture.
In his paintings, he captured the natural with refined color and light, which yielded firm and balanced forms. He preferred to capture the peacefulness of a woodland path or other quiet spots, rather than the noise of an industrial area. Later in his life he liked seasonal paintings, since they gave him a chance to probe deeper into a philosophical spirit.
Mifflin turned to poetry at the age of 51. According to what he wrote in The Hills, his first volume of poetry (1896), he claimed that the fumes of the paint made him sick. In his lifetime he filled twelve books of verse with two hundred poems and more than six hundred sonnets. He wrote more sonnets than William Shakespeare, John Milton, and William Wordworth. John Keats, however, was his favorite. He preferred Keats for his expression regarding the love of beauty, both real and ideal; his forms were always poised and dignified. During this time he also taught himself the art of etching, using this technique to illustrate The Hills.
Mifflin stressed a strong love of beauty in his poetry as he did in his painting. His imagination and beautiful sense of harmony characterize his verse. The main source of his ambition, inspiration and consolation are clearly seen in The Invocation.
He devoted his greatest efforts to the category of the sonnet, considering it the most distinguished and exalted of all forms of English poetry. He enjoyed the structure, the metrical and rhythmic beauty, the plan of metrical rhyme and diction. Mifflin found it much like a musical composition.
Sonnets bipartite in structure usually have a combination of eight lines followed by six. The rhyme schemes and diction include many metaphors and an extensive vocabulary. His one hundred and fifty nature sonnets emphasize the descriptive, not the intuitional. To sample his poetic styles, one should turn to his three hundred and fifty collected sonnets, published in 1905 with a second edition in 1907. A large number came from earlier books.
As a poet, Mifflin was an idealist and respected the ideal of Greek mythological beauty. In the Echoes of the Greek Idylls and Slopes of Helicon, we find no roughness of spirit. There was a conscience of a spiritual presence. His religious sonnets were grounded in the faith of a personal God which related more to his aesthetic feelings than to traditional Christianity. Themes of life and death occur in many sonnets. His poetry inspired faith, hope and deep emotion. These sonnets were more descriptive than philosophical.
Mifflin's personal ambition was to excel; he wanted to write the perfect sonnet. Like the classical Greeks, he hoped his poetry would obtain an immortality. Mifflin thought the world had largely ignored him, even though his poetry received high praise. At his life's end he changed his opinion and credited his readers with more accolades than he had earlier thought. Perhaps he was too hard on himself. Lloyd Mifflin carried the name "Hermit of the hills" who walked the 'world as one entranced' and 'in life's turbid wave', dropped ' the crown-jewel of his melody.'"
E. Hershey Sneath. America's Greatest Sonneteer. The Clover Press (Geo. D. Hall): Columbia, PA.,1928.
Collection consists of personal, legal, and business-related letters and documents concerning the life and affairs of J. Houston Mifflin. Also, similar documents to, from, and about other members of the extended Houston and Mifflin families. Contains typed copies of two letters from J. Houston Mifflin to his son, Lloyd Mifflin, containing an eye-witness account of the June 1863 Confederate advance into Wrightsville. Also, a legal document signed by John Passmore.
The Almanac Collection consists of almanacs printed in Lancaster County and other locations. They contain long-range weather predictions, calendars, moon phases, planting guides, and natural remedies. Many publications also contain articles and poems about historical events and persons, as well as government and political information, housekeeping information, recipes, songs, titles of sheet music, music for a variety of instruments, times and places of the Meetings of the Friends on the Continent of America, and engravings and descriptions of battles. Some almanacs are illustrated.
System of Arrangement
Organized by language. Each series has paper indexes arranged alphabetically, chronologically, and by box and folder numbers.
Muddy Creek Lutheran and Reformed Church Collection
Description
The Muddy Creek Lutheran and Reformed Church Collection contains church records, property records, legal documents, a songbook, and a liturgy book.
Admin/Biographical History
Peace United Church of Christ was formed in the late 1960s by the joining of St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Adamstown and Muddy Creek United Church of Christ. Muddy Creek UCC is one of the earliest German Reformed churches in the area, its founding marked with the first recorded baptisms in January of 1731.
The Hubley Collection contains legal documents, case papers, family and military papers, wills, deeds, bills and receipts, indentures for servants and enslaved persons, correspondence, petitions, and church-related information.
Admin/Biographical History
John Hubley and Joseph Hubley were Lancaster attorneys.
System of Arrangement
The legal papers are arranged chronologically. Case papers are arranged
alphabetically by surname of the plaintiff or defendant. Family papers are grouped by the family member's name and chronologically within that name. Box 6 is arranged chronologically.
Collection contains the research materials of R. Harold Barton on the mills and bridges of Lancaster County. Included are field notes, working papers, photographer's negatives, and postcards. Indexes are available listing mills by name and location, and bridges by name.
Four notebooks are the finished product of the mills and bridges research of R. Harold Barton. These notebooks are in the library under Barton, R. Harold on the online catalog (LC621.85, B283, v.1-v.4). The notebooks constitute 1 cubic ft. of the collection.
The remaining six boxes are located within the manuscript collection. These boxes house working papers, field notes, worksheets, notebooks, photographs, negatives, additional albums of photographs and other miscellaneous material relating to Lancaster County bridges and mills.
Mr. Barton uses a numerical system to locate bridges and mills by township or by the names of the streams, rivers, runs and creeks. Three indexes have been prepared: one lists the bridges by name, one the location by town or townships, and one the names of the mills.
There are a few notes related to Lancaster County gunsmiths, missionaries, and Indian traders.
System of Arrangement
Collection is arranged by township, number, and index.
The work of Eleanor Fulton, a professional researcher. Contains information on the Presbyterian Church in Lancaster County, including First Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Donegal Presbyterian Church. Also, genealogy notes for local families and St. James Episcopal Church.