Collection ID: 0002 | Metadata type: TEI | TEI XML | Data

Title

The young country clerk's collection of the best presidents of bills, bonds, conditions, aquittances, releases, indentures, deeds of sale, letters of attorney, last wills and testaments, etc. :

Authors

• Pastorius, Francis Daniel, 1651-1719
• Watson, John F. 1779-1860

Call number

Ms. Codex 89
(Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Rare Book & Manuscript Library)

Alternate identifiers

• bibid: 2706995
• http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/medren/2706995

Publisher

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries

Language

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

Origin

Date

1692-1719

Place

Philadelphia

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).

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.
   

Extent

115 leaves :

Foliation

Paper, 115; [1-115]; modern foliation in pencil, lower right recto. Irregular contemporary pagination in ink, upper outer corners.

Support

Paper

Binding

Contemporary parchment. Manuscript is fragile, paper breaking at the edges of leaves, some leaves breaking due to severe oxidation of ink.

Script

Written in a cursive script, primarily in the hand of Francis Daniel Pastorius, with some additions to the text in later hands.

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.
   

Subjects topical

• Legal documents--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--Early works to 1800
• Legal instruments--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--Early works to 1800
• Letter writing
• Quakers--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia

Genres

• Codices
• Manuscripts, American--17th century
• Manuscripts, American--18th century

Licenses

• Text

  This description is ©2016 University of Pennsylvania Libraries. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License version 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. For a description of the terms of use see the Creative Commons Deed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

  URL

  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

• Text

  All referenced images and their content are free of known copyright restrictions and in the public domain. See the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark page for usage details, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/.

  URL

  http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

Table of contents

• fol. 2r — The young country clerk?s collection, f. 2r
• fol. 79r — Epistolography, f. 79r

Decorations

• fol. 1v — Owner signature, f. 1v
• fol. 47v — Owner signature, f. 47v
• fol. 66v — Owner signature, f. 66v