Morris Wistar Wood Collection

Correspondence, diaries, photographs, genealogy, deeds, financial, legal and business papers, clippings, maps, facsimiles and other misc. papers.

Primarily correspondence of the related Quaker families of Collins, Cresson, Emlen, Morris, Wistar and Wood with friends and family. There are a large number of travel letters in the collection, including letters of Caleb Cresson (1775-1821) while in England and France in 1815-1816; letters of Joshua H. Morris (1822-1885) and his wife, Elizabeth Stokes Morris, written to his daughter (her step-daughter) while they were in Europe, etc. (1876-1878); letters of Rev. Charles Wood (1851-1936) while he was in Europe in 1878-1891; correspondence (primarily love letters) between Annabella C. Wistar Wood and Horatio C. Wood, both before and after their marriage in 1897; letters (with photographs) of Horatio Curtis Wood (1870-1943) while traveling with his family in Europe (1913). There is also correspondence between Annabella Elliott Cresson (1743-1793) and her husband Caleb Cresson (1742-1816), a business letterbook of Bartholomew Wistar (1790-1841), letters of John Wistar (1759-1815) written to his son, Bartholomew Wistar and a notebook of letters (with photographs) of Morris Wistar Wood (1899-1980) detailing his experiences in China at the Canton Christian College (Lingnan University) in 1921-1923.

Includes diaries (1922-1978) of Morris Wistar Wood and his wife, Evelyn Byrd Page Wood (includes their life in China); diaries (1918-1924) of Annabella Bonnyman Wood (1902-1926) telling of her life as a Philadelphia debutante; diaries (1885-1905) of Annabella Cresson Wistar Wood (1872-1967) kept by her before her marriage to Horatio C. Wood and with entries by both of them afterwards (also with photographs); diaries (1910-1943) of Horatio Curtis Wood; also memoirs (ca. 1764) of Joshua Cresson (1744-1793) and transcripts made by Charles Caleb Cresson of James Cresson's Journal of his trip to Barbados in 1784-1785 and Caleb Cresson's journal of his trip to England in 1815-1816. ]

Papers of Charles Caleb Cresson (1816-1902) include his research notes and notebooks on various topics, including Pierre Cresson, William Penn Charter School, and John Archdale, the Quaker colonial governor of the Carolinas. Cresson's papers also include his genealogical research on Bacon, Cresson, Elliott, Emlen, Warder and related families; a letterbook (1893-1895) and his “Our Saviour as a Wine Drinker.”

Charles Wood papers include biographical material compiled by Herbert Howe, who appears to have been working on a biography of Wood in the 1940s.

Other manuscripts of interest in the collection are Caspar Wistar's oath of allegiance (1721); Caleb Cresson's 1816 passport signed by John Quincy Adams and Margaret Philpotts' 1785 manumission of Jess, an enslaved woman.

Photographs include four albums, chiefly of Cresson, Wistar and Wood families as well as many loose and mounted portraits.