Scope and Contents:
This collection contains handwritten and typed transcripts of papers, the originals of which are in the Wharton Papers of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Certain papers are printed in Clarence Walworth Alvord and Clarence Edwin Carter, eds., The New Regime, 1765-1767, and Trade and Politics, 1767-1769, Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (1916, 1921).
The collection documents the activities of the Baynton, Wharton, and Morgan trading house of Philadelphia, focusing on company business, trade, land settlement and the purchase and sale of land. The papers also deal with Indian problems, the growing antipathy between the colonies and England, the Boston Tea Party, the closing of the Boston Port, activities of the colonies and the Continental Congress of 1774. The collection also includes articles of agreement, signed respectively by William Franklin, Sir William Johnson, George Croghan, John Baynton, Samuel Wharton, George Morgan, Joseph Wharton, Sr., Joseph Wharton, Jr., John Hughes, Joseph Galloway, John Hughes, Jr., Thomas Hood, and Isaac Hughes, which pertain to the establishment of a civil government by England in the Illinois country near Fort Chartres.
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