Finding Black Families: Stories from The Chew Family Papers

When seven generations of a wealthy Philadelphia-based family save all of their household records and correspondence, you know there are some compelling stories buried in there. But where to start?

For years, staff at Cliveden of the National Trust in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia have utilized these records to interpret the house. Recently, they have spear-headed an effort with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to digitize documents that illuminate the lives of African American residents. Members of Philadelphia’s African American Genealogy Group have begun to sift through these records to better understand the stories they may tell and offer suggestions for next steps for making them available to and usable for family and community historians. This project was funded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation Interpretation and Education Endowed Fund, that was made possible by a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On Zoom!