Brinton family papers

The Brinton family papers relates to members of the prominent Philadelphia-area family and several of their related family lines over five generations from 1715-1930, with the bulk of the documents falling between 1840-1890. The collection consists of 6.3 linear feet of material and includes a wide variety of sources including mortgages, deeds, leases, account books, surveys, correspondence, land use agreements, legal documents, travel diaries, medical notes, newspaper clippings, Civil War reports and orders, genealogical research, sermons, essays, and photographs; and receipts for bonds, rent, food, transportation, medical and dental services, labor, stocks, tax, clothing, house repair, and education. These receipts are mundane, yet richly thorough, documentation of the domestic and business affairs of two early nineteenth-century Philadelphians, John Hill Brinton and his son George Brinton.

The collection further represents the varied careers of several interesting family members: the Rev. Ferdinand de Wilton Ward, a Christian missionary to India, 1836-1856, who studied and translated Tamil; Dr. John Hill Brinton, a distinguished Civil War surgeon; Dr. Chirstian Brinton, a scholar and critic who served as director of foreign art at the 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial; and Joseph Steinmentz, an engineer whose 1929 world tour is documented in letters to his family. Other notable documents in the collection include early family deeds signed by Richard, John, and William Penn, descendants of William Penn; and three 1805 deeds executed by Katherine Inglis, a female attorney practicing in Philadelphia.

The collection contains nine separate series organized around different family members: I. John Steinmetz, 1760-1831; II. John H. Brinton, 1790- 1837; III. George Brinton, 1827-1858; IV. Dr. John Hill Brinton, 1834-1908; V. Reverend Ferdinand de Wilton Ward, 1793-1890; VI. Dr. Ward Brinton, 1901-1928; VII. Dr. Christian Brinton, 1929; VIII. Joseph J. Steinmetz, 1929-1930; and Series IX. Other Family Members. The tenth series comprises 119 deeds, several of which cross generations of the Brinton family.

Series I. John Steinmetz, 1760-1831, includes documents such as land use agreements, bonds, rent receipts, court documents, surveys, and maps related to his real estate dealings in Maurice River in Cumberland County, New Jersey; Manheim Township in York County, Pennsylvania; and Hallam Township in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The correspondence includes both business and family interests in real estate and shipping goods. It also contains three very early land receipts, 1715-1733 (F1).

Series II. John H. Brinton, 1790-1837, includes rent and account receipts, legal documents, land use agreements, deeds, indentures, surveys, maps, and numerous mortgages related to his real estate affairs in Maurice River, New Jersey; Manheim Township in York County, Pennsylvania; and other areas of Pennsylvania. Among the real estate correspondence is an 1812 letter to John H. Brinton, written on paper bearing the watermark of Coulter, Bever, and Bowman, who established Ohio’s first paper mill in 1807 (see Gravell, American Watermarks). Regular correspondents include Andrews and Elliot, Isaac Bonsall, and John R. Coates. This series may be most useful for reconstructing the economic networks revealed by the numerous mortgages and receipts it contains. The mortgages often reveal the names of the people and the ways in which they used the land in several regions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Additional deeds and indentures related to John H. Brinton are found in Series X. The extensive domestic receipts may be used to reconstruct the material world in which Brinton and his family lived in the early national period in Philadelphia. Receipts for building materials, clothing, coal, wood, education, food, furnishing and repairing the home, labor, medical and dental services, stocks, taxes, and transportation provide a variety of ways to examine their family life.

Series III. George Brinton, 1827-1858, includes accounts, receipts, land agreements, court documents, and correspondence related to business and real estate in Maurice River in Cumberland County, New Jersey, and Geneseo, New York. Important correspondents include Allan Ayrnault and William Spencer. As in the preceding series, George Brinton’s varied receipts for building materials, clothing, coal, wood, fuel, society memberships, education, food, furnishing and repairing the home, labor, medical and dental services, mortgages, stocks, taxes, and transportation provide extensive details to study the world in which his family lived.

Series IV. Dr. John Hill Brinton, 1834-1908, includes rich materials on his medical career as a student, as a surgeon during the Civil War, and later as a practicing physician and professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Official correspondence from the Civil War, including orders, replies, receipts, inventories, and reports helps provide a useful perspective of the Civil War. Dr. John H. Brinton served as brigade surgeon under generals Fremont and Grant, 1861-1863, and as supertindent of hospitals at Nashville, 1864-1865. His correspondence before and after the Civil War includes both personal and professional letters to him, as well as copies of outgoing correspondence. A final group of correspondence was addressed directly to Mrs. John H. Brinton (Sarah Ward Brinton), and includes letters from her husband, her family, and father, Ferdinand de Wilton Ward, whose papers are arranged in Series V. Several notebook and account books include lists of patients and notes on treatments and visits. He authored various medical articles and gave several public speeches. His papers also include notes, lectures, and journals from when he was a student and a professor of medicine. Of special interest in these medical notes are a case study of spinabifida and a notebook on “Eye Surgery and Operative Surgery” from an 1852 trip to Vienna. Dr. Brinton’s papers reflect the changing practice of medicine during the second half of the nineteenth century from a variety of perspectives.

Series V. Reverend Ferdinand de Wilton Ward, 1793-1890, includes a number of journals, account books, sermons, and study notes related to his religious work as a pastor and as a missionary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in India. He translated some of his lectures and sermons into Tamil to aid in teaching the Gospel in India. His account books and membership lists also shed light on the structure and management of the church in Maduras, India; Geneseo, New York; and Rochester, New York. He compiled several notebooks on genealogy and corresponded with various members of his family concerning this topic. Ward’s extensive notes, sermons, and discussions of religious topics and experiences provides an extremely useful source for examining various religious, intellectual, and philosophical beliefs and attitudes from the 1850s through the 1890s. Additional correspondence and diary entries of the Wards may be found in a related microfilm collection, Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which is owned by the University of Delaware Library.

The limited amount of correspondence in Series VI. Dr. Ward Brinton, 1901-1928, primarily concerns Dr. Brinton’s appointments in the Medical Out-Patient Department at Jefferson Hospital and his service in the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Tuberculosis. The Society’s efforts to prevent tuberculosis in Philadelphia particularly targeted labor unions and members of the working class during the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Series VII. Dr. Christian Brinton, 1929, contains a limited sample of his work as an art critic and lecturer. Included are five essays, one script for a presentation of lantern slides, and three drafts of a radio speech on Native American arts. Among his correspondence is a 1929 letter to Theodore Dreiser, which conveys his impressions of Russian Ballet.

Series VIII. Joseph J. Steinmetz, 1929-1930, contains letters, photographs, and postcards documenting a world tour through Japan, China, the Philippines, Indo-China, India, Ceylon, Egypt, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Athens. Steinmetz addressed the correspondence to his mother and sister Margaret, who both lived in Germantown, Pennsylvania, but were also abroad, for a period in 1929, in Paris. He filled his letters with observations of the places he visited and the people he met, allowing the researcher to share Steinmetz’s view of the world in 1929-1930.

Series IX. Other Family Members encompasses miscellaneous documents and Series X. Deeds includes documents that span several generations of Steinmetz and Brinton family land holdings. A genealogical summary of the Brinton family is appended to this finding aid.