Details

Subjects:

Legal documents -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia -- Early works to 1800.
Legal instruments -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia -- Early works to 1800.
Letter writing.
Quakers -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.
Quakers.
Legal instruments.
Legal documents.
Germantown (Philadelphia, Pa.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.
Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia.

Form/Genre:

Codices.
Manuscripts, American.

Language:

English, with some sections in Dutch and German, and a few verses and quotations in Latin.

Summary:

Examples of legal agreements and forms, including marriage certificates for Friends (Quakers); license to keep an ale house; agreements regarding land, leases and mortgages; warrants; wills; agreements for indentured servants, etc., some from actual documents in use at the time; with a section on letter writing titled epistolography and epistolographia. Pastorius used the Young Clerk's Guide by Sir Richard Hutton (1649); the Young Clerk's Tutor Enlarged by Edward Cocker (10th ed., 1682); and The Young Secretary's Guide by John Hill (1687) as models and references in this work, but also based it upon "authentical manuscripts" (f. 2r).

Contents:

1. f.2r-78v: The young country clerk's collection.
2. f. 79r-115v: Epistolography.

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title from caption title (f. 2r). A later title appears in the hand of John F. Watson, dated 1860: "Forms & precedents of conveyancing & magistracy, and of letters on business & courtesy; as used by Francis D. Pastorius, the founder of Germantown ... Seen and examined by John F. Watson year 1860" (f. 1r). Some of the later additions to the manuscript may be Watson's.
Title for the section on letter writing (f. 79r): Epistolographia, or, an easy method for writing letters upon any subject.
Many of the forms copied include dates, but this manuscript is undated, written after the birth of Pastorius' son in 1692 (f. 2r) and probably over a period of time after 1700.
Foliation: Paper, 115; [1-115]; modern foliation in pencil, lower right recto. Irregular contemporary pagination in ink, upper outer corners.
Script: Written in a cursive script, primarily in the hand of Francis Daniel Pastorius, with some additions to the text in later hands.
Binding: Contemporary parchment. Manuscript is fragile, paper breaking at the edges of leaves, some leaves breaking due to severe oxidation of ink.
Origin: Written in Philadelphia, 1692-1719.

Penn Provenance:

Former owners include: Charles M. Pastorius, January 1, 1812 (f. 47v); Thomas Scattergood (f. 66v); Ann Maria Matiby (f. 1v).
Gift of Washington Pastorius, 1949.

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Codex 89

Contributor:

Watson, John F. (John Fanning), 1779-1860.

Contains:

Epistolographia.
Epistolography.

OCLC:

155993173

Web link:

Unique at Penn blog post