Useful State information
Pa. State Archives beginning April 1, the name search fee goes up from $5 per name to $10 per name. For copies of warrants, surveys, and patents, the cost per document goes up to $1 per document, from 50 cents.

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Philadelphia City Archives
401 N. Broad to 3101 Market

Orphan's Court files.
Access to these files is through an index that is available through the LDS FHC.

These files are guardianship proceedings.
It appears that PA law then (and perhaps now, who knows) required the appointment of a guardian under the supervision of the Orphan's Court for the estate of any minor who came into money, whether the minor's parents were still alive or not.

It is not always mentioned in the petition, but the guardian is often a collateral relative, either an adult sibling or an uncle or aunt, and the attorney who prepares the document is sometimes (but less frequently) a family member. Sometimes, the guardian needs to post a bond, and the bond is often posted by a collateral relative, but the relationship is not always stated.

Each file had a petition for guardianship in it; some also had the guardian's accounting; some had papers discharging the guardian.

These files were a genealogical gold mine. You could find: siblings, parent-child relationships; an illegitimate child (and the child's putative father): the date of death of a child ;and links between two families!!!

One may be able to access these files in the following way. (Philadelphia is accessible) First, get the microfilm from LDS; look up the surname. The index will provide a year, a docket number, and a file number, so it will look something like 5438, docket 3, 1933. Write to the Orphan's Court, giving them the name of the case, the year, the docket, and the file number, as well as the date you would like to examine the files.

In theory, these are NOT probate indices. There is a separate index to testate administrations (deaths where the decedent left a will), and a separate index to intestate administrations (deaths without a will). However, one of the references in this index was for a simple intestate succession administration. There was no guardianship involved, so no reason for it to be in the Orphan's Court index, but there it was.

More on Orphan's Court
You may not see an Orphan's court record for a child who's mother died (by Pa. law she didn't really own anything anyway) but when the father died they appointed a guardian to protect the child's interest.

If the mother remarried, which often happened fast, then any property she owned became the property of her husband. They usually didn't appoint the step father as the guardian since his interest was thought to be contrary to the childs.

The guardian was usually a relative but not always, often an older brother. If the child was under 14 the court appointed the guardian, if he was between 14 and 16 he could select his own guardian, those over 16 were thought to be old enough to manage their own affairs.

In searching in Orphan's court you need to search for a number of years, often the estate would sit until the kids were old enough to get married, and then their would be a complaint in Orphan's Court saying that so and so, the daughter of so and so, who recently married so and so, begs the court to resolve this matter. Often the newly weds wanted the money from the estate to buy property and often that was just before they left for the frontier where land was cheapest.

Passenger Ships to Philadelphia
Books
Author: Pennsylvania. Navigation Commission for the Delaware River and Its Navigable Tributaries.
Title: Registers of vessel arrivals and clearances, 1784-1791, 1793-1797, 1802-1840, 1843-1956.
Description: 41.5 cubic ft. (34 volumes).
Notes: A record of shipping at the port of Philadelphia. The listings are signed by the vessel's captain and for the most part show the name, classification, nationality (from 1902 onward), and oftentimes the tonnage of the vessel; the port of arrival or clearance; the name of the owner or consignee; and the names of the pilot and captain. A brief description of the vessel's cargo is usually given as well.

The following indices can be used to retrieve data from the registers: Index Of Vessel Arrivals, 1862-1879, 1881-1882,1884-1890,1894-1937,Index Of Vessel Clearances, 1862-1863, 1879, 1882-1884,1892-1894, 1899-1907. 1915, and Index Of Coastal Vessel Arrivals, 1873-1878.

Indexed externally, alphabetically by name of vessel. Microfilm for the years 1784-1800 available from the Division of Archives and Manuscripts, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Request information on purchase price.

Location: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Division of Archives and Manuscripts, P.O. Box 1026, Harrisburg, PA 17108-1026

Author: Eyre, Manuel, 1777-1845.
Title: Business papers, 1795-1847 (bulk 1800-1805).
Description: 720 items.
Notes: Manuel Eyre, a Philadelphia merchant of Quaker
ancestry, was born in 1777. His father, Manuel Eyre, Sr., (1736-1805) was a shipwright in Kensington and a colonel in the Contintental Army. He obtained his training in the counting house of Henry Pratt and Abraham Kintzing and in 1803 joined with Charles Massey, Jr., (b. 1778) to form the mercantile firm of Eyre & Massey, a partnership that lasted until Eyre's death in 1845.

The firm of Eyre & Massey owned over 20 vessels, ranging in size from ships to sloops, and traded around the world, mounting voyages to Europe, the Caribbean, South America, China, India and the Pacific Islands. Manuel Eyre also served on the Philadelphia City Council and was a founding director of the Schuylkill Navigation Company (1816) and the Second Bank of the United States (1816). After 1820 he gradually retired from active trading and devoted much of his time to agriculture. He owned two farms outside the city and three in Delaware. He was the founder of Delaware City, Del., at the mouth of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, buying the entire site in 1828, erecting public buildings and dividing it into lots.

The records consist of seven lots of Manuel Eyre's business papers, spanning the years, 1795-1847.

Accession 994 (part) consists of shipping papers (1801-1802) for the ships OLIVE BRANCH and CHARLESTON PACKET and the brigs ARISTIDES, FAME, and NANCY trading with La Rochelle, Havre, Charleston and the West Indies. They include accounts, cargo manifests, bills of lading, outfitter's bills and agreements with captains.

Accession 1003 (part) includes additional shipping papers (1797-1815) for the ship OLIVE BRANCH, brigs ARISTIDES and NANCY, sloop PERSEVERANCE and schooner EUTAW trading primarily with Hamburg and the West Indies. These are also 20 letters (1796-1803), mostly from Troup & Brown at Port au Prince concerning trade with Haiti, Amsterdam, and Charleston and 6 items (1797-1806) re Eyre's property in Burlington, N.J. A separate group of 38 items contains accounts and inventories of the Kensington Lead Works, established in 1832 by Franklin Eyre, and correspondence from manager Thomas Janvier to Manuel Eyre.

Accession 1063 (part) contains additional shipping papers, checks, bills of lading, and customs house lists of goods imported (1801-1823).

Accession 1097 (part) comprises 43 items, including a manifest for the OLIVE BRANCH (1803), correspondence re orders, accounts payable, promissory notes, bank drafts, and bills of lading. There are two agreements to rent properties in Delaware City (1827) and Philadelphia (1832).

Accession 1144 (part) consists of 5 items (1796-1835): a letter of captain William Brewster on coffee sold (1796), Eyre's accounts with the firm of Eyre & Massey (1806), a letter of Thomas Janvier introducing William Peterson, an invoice of William L, Hodge to Eyre (1835), and a freight list of the ASISTIDES bound for Charleston.

Accession 1215 (part) consists of advertising circulars.
Accession 1247 (part) consists of a stock certificate for 100 shares of the Peoples Steam Navigation Company(1833). Described in: John Beverley Riggs, A GUIDE TO MANUSCRIPTS IN THE ELEUTHERIAN MILLS HISTORICAL LIBRARY, SUPPLEMENT CONTAINING ACCESSIONS FOR THE YEARS 1966 THROUGH 1975 (Greenville, Del.: Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, 1978). Subjects include:
Massey, Charles, b. 1778.
Aristides (Brig).
Charleston Packet (Ship).
Eutaw (Schooner).
Eyre & Massey.
Fame (Brig).
Kensington Lead Works (Philadelphia, Pa.).

Location: Hagley Museum and Library, Manuscripts and
Archives Department,
298 Buck Road East,
Greenville, Del. 19807