Bibliography

Records in the Chester County Archives have been used by numerous historians and students in their research. The following bibliography, while not complete, includes the most recent and/or significant works. The list does not include theses, dissertations, genealogies or township/borough histories. 

African Americans
 
  • Bernier, Celeste-Marie. Suffering and Sunset: World War I in the Art and Life of Horace Pippin. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016.
  • Bussel, Robert. “’The Most Indispensable Man in His Community’: African-American Entrepreneurs in West Chester, Pennsylvania, 1865-1925.” Pennsylvania History. 65 (Summer 1998): 324-349.
  • Diggins, Milt. Stealing Freedom Along the Mason-Dixon Line: Thomas McCreary, the Notorious Slave Catcher from Maryland. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2015.
  • Kashatus, William C. Just Over the Line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad. West Chester, Pa.: Chester County Historical Society, 2002.
  • Maddox, Lucy. The Parker Sisters; a Border Kidnapping. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016.
  • Soderlund, Jean R. "Black Women in Colonial Pennsylvania." The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 107, no. 1 (1983): 49-68. 
Economics, Labor, and Consumerism

  • Bourque, Monique. "Bound Out from the Almshouse: Community Networks in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1800–1860." In Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America, edited by Herndon, Ruth Wallis and Murray, John E., 71-84. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. 
  • Bourque, Monique. “Poor Relief ‘Without Violating the Rights of Humanity’: Almshouse Administration in the Philadelphia Region, 1790-1860.” In Down and Out in Early America. Edited by Billy G. Smith. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.
  • Brewer, Holly. By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
  • Clemens, Paul G. E. “The Consumer Culture of the Middle Atlantic, 1760-1820.” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LXII, Number 4, October 2005, pp. 577-624.
  • Herndon, Ruth Wallis and John E. Murray. Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.
  • Hood, Adrienne D. "Organization and Extent of Textile Manufacture in Eighteenth-Century Rural Pennsylvania: A Case Study of Chester County." The Journal of Economic History 50, no. 2 (1990): 434-36. 
  • Hood, Adrienne D. The Weaver’s Craft: Cloth, Commerce, and Industry in Early Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
  • Hood, Adrienne D. “The Material World of Cloth: Production and Use in Eighteenth-Century Rural Pennsylvania.” The William and Mary Quarterly. 53 (January 1996): 43-66.
  • Hood, Adrienne D. “The Gender Division of Labor in the Production of Textiles in Eighteenth-Century, Rural Pennsylvania (Rethinking the New England Model).” Journal of Social History. 27 (1994): 537-561.
  • Lanier, Gabrielle. "Samuel Wilson's Working World: Builders and Buildings in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1780-1827." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 4 (1991): 23-30. 
  • Lemon, James T. The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.
  • Lindert, Peter H., and Jeffrey G. Williamson. "American Incomes Before and After the Revolution." The Journal of Economic History 73, no. 3 (2013): 725-65. 
  • Lindert, Peter H. and Jeffrey G. Williamson. Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. 
  • Marietta, Jack D. “The Distribution of Wealth in Eighteenth-Century America: Nine Chester County Tax Lists, 1693-1799.” Pennsylvania History. 62 (1995): 532-545.
  • Scheffler, Judith. “’. . . there was difficulty and danger on every side’: The Family and Business Leadership of Rebecca Lukens.” Pennsylvania History. 66 (Summer 1999): 276-310.
  • Schweitzer, Mary M. Custom and Contract: Household, Government, and the Economy in Colonial Pennsylvania. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
  • Simler, Lucy. “The Landless Worker: An Index of Economic and Social Change in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography. 114 (April 1990): 163-199.
  • Simler, Lucy and Clemens, Paul G. E. “The ‘Best Poor Man’s Country’ in 1783: The Population Structure of Rural Society in Late-Eighteenth-Century Southeastern Pennsylvania.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 133 (1989): 234-261.
  • Simler, Lucy and Clemens, Paul G. E. “Rural Labor and the Farm Household in Chester County, Pennsylvania, 1750-1820.” In Work and Labor in Early America. Edited by Stephen Innes. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Law and Crime
  • Downey, Dennis B. and Hyser, Raymond M. No Crooked Death: Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
  • Horle, Craig W. and Wokeck, Marianne S., editors. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania; A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 1: 1682-1709. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
  • Horle, Craig W.; Foster, Joseph S.; and Scheib, Jeffrey L., editors. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania; A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 2: 1710-1756. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
  • Horle, Craig W. and Foster, Joseph S., editors. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania; A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. 3: 1757-1775 (2 vols.). Harrisburg, PA: House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 2005.
  • Manion, Jen. Liberty's Prisoners; Carceral Culture in Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
  • Marietta, Jack D. and Rowe, G. S. Troubled Experiment; Crime and Justice in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
  • Marietta, Jack D. and Rowe, G. S. “Personal Violence in a ‘Peaceable Kingdom,’ Pennsylvania, 1682-1801.” In Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America. Edited by Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 1999.
  • Marietta, Jack D. and Rowe, G. S. “Violent Crime, Victims, and Society in Pennsylvania, 1682-1800.” Explorations in Early American Culture; A Supplemental Issue of Pennsylvania History. 66 (1999): 24-54.
  • Myrsiades, Linda. “Legal Practice and Pragmatics in the Law: The 1821 Trials of John Reed, ‘Fugitive Slave.’” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 138, no. 3 (2014): 305-38.
  • Myrsiades, Linda. “A Tale of a Whiskey Rebellion Judge: William Paterson, Grand Jury Charges, and the Trials of the Whiskey Rebels.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 140, no. 2 (2016): 129-65.
  • Nash, Gary B. and Soderlund, Jean R. Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and its Aftermath. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  • Nelson, William E. The Common Law in Colonial America: The Middle Colonies and the Carolinas, 1660-1773. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  • Offutt, William M., Jr. Of “Good Laws” and “Good Men”: Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680-1710. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
  • Tomlins, Christopher. “Early British America, 1585-1830: Freedom Bound” in Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955, edited by Douglas Hay and Paul Craven. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Social and Cultural Life
  • Block, Sharon. Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 
  • Bourque, Monique. ""The Peculiar Characteristic of Christian Communities": The County Almshouses of the Delaware Valley, 1790-1860." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 6 (1997): 60-73. doi:10.2307/3514363.
  • Clemens, Paul G. E., editor. The Colonial Era: A Documentary Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
  • Falk, Cynthia G. “Symbols of Assimilation or Status? The Meanings of Eighteenth-Century Houses in Coventry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania.” Winterthur Portfolio. 33 (1998): 107-134.
  • Fleming, Stephen J. ""Congenial to Almost Every Shade of Radicalism": The Delaware Valley and the Success of Early Mormonism." Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 17, no. 2 (2007): 129-64.
  • Griffin, Patrick. "The People with No Name: Ulster's Migrants and Identity Formation in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania." The William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 3 (2001): 587-614. 
  • Griffin, Patrick. The People with No Name: Ireland’s Ulster Scots, America’s Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
  • Haines, Deborah L. "William Penn's Townships, the "Cheshire Friends" and the Shape of Community in America." Quaker History 101, no. 2 (2012): 24-56. 
  • Harper, Douglas R. “If Thee Must Fight”: A Civil War History of Chester County, Pennsylvania. West Chester, Pa.: Chester County Historical Society, 1990.
  • Levy, Barry. Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
  • Marsh, Dawn G. A Lenape among the Quakers: The Life of Hannah Freeman. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.
  • Merrell, James H. Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.
  • Miller, Kerby A., et al, editors. Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan; Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Simler, Lucy. “Tenancy in Colonial Pennsylvania: The Case of Chester County.” The William and Mary Quarterly. 43 (October 1986): 542-569.
  • Simler, Lucy. “The Township: The Community of the Rural Pennsylvanian.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 106 (January 1982): 41-68.
  • Tomlins, Christopher. Freedom Bound; Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Women and Gender
  • Block, Sharon. Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
  • Jensen, Joan M. Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
  • Smith, Merril D. Breaking the Bonds; Marital Discord in Pennsylvania, 1730-1830. New York: New York University Press, 1991.
  • Smith, Merril D. “’Unnatural Mothers’: Infanticide, Motherhood, and Class in the Mid-Atlantic, 1730-1830.” In Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America. Edited by Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy. New York: Routledge, 1999.
  • Waciega, Lisa Wilson. “A ‘Man of Business’: The Widow of Means in Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1750-1850.” The William and Mary Quarterly. 44 (January 1987): 40-64.
  • Wilson, Lisa. Life After Death: Widows in Pennsylvania, 1750-1850. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

Updated March 2019