In 2009, the David Library made a large acquisition at the Pennsylvania State Archive. The Papers of Jasper Yeates was among those acquired. As you'll note in David’s report, Yeates was a very important figure in revolutionary Pennsylvania. Stationed in Lancaster County as a prominent lawyer, he served on the Committee of Safety for the County, was a member of the Middle Department for Indian Affairs during days immediately following Independence, and served as a Supreme Court judge for the state of Pennsylvania. The Collection we have contains a wide-range of his papers. Other portions of his papers can be found in the Lancaster County Historical Society and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Jasper Yeates was born in 1745 and died in 1817. His father, John Yeats, was a Philadelphia merchant, so Jasper may have been born in Philadelphia and moved to Lancaster when he decided to start a law practice. He married Catherine Burd, whose family came from Carlisle, and his business correspondence includes a number of letters from two of her brothers, Joseph and Edward. Another in-law family was the Shippens of Lancaster. The Yeats, Burds, and Shippens all seem to have known each other well and intermarried closely. The PA State Archives contain a Burd-Shippen Family Collection of papers dating from 1715 to 1834 (M-30). Judging from the papers, Jasper practiced law from the early 1760s until he died. In 1791, he was appointed an associate justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a position he held until he died.

Each microfilm reel contains, at the beginning, a typed list of contents. This includes a one-page general contents list and a three-page letter-by-letter list (name and place to; name and place from; date) of the papers in the correspondence section.

§ Commissioners for Indian Affairs for the Middle District: This brief section of papers is fascinating but confusing—given that I have not done the background research to understand it. The Continental Congress had a Commission for Indian Affairs with probably three districts. The papers in this section are all financially related. Some researcher with a very particular interest might be thrilled to find this little cache of papers. Also, the cache actually “leaks” over into the correspondence section, in which a few similar documents are found dated in the latter half of 1776.

§ Committee of Safety: Jasper Yeates served on the Lancaster County Committee of Safety, and some of this organization's records are included in this collection. By 1775, committees of correspondence had evolved through being committees of observation to being committees of safety. The difference in the latter name was that it implied a mission of action, for the safety of the province, potentially through the use of the provincial militia. Jasper's involvement with the Committee on Safety, as revealed by the papers in this section, was in March and April 1776, just before it was reconstituted. This section of the papers is tantalizingly short, with little of substance in it.

§ Correspondence: Most of the letters are business letters from others to John Yeats and later to Jasper Yeats. The largest number are letters Jasper received concerning details of individual law cases (all civil law; a fair number land-transaction cases) that he was handling. Two of these letters are written in German. A few are copies of letters by Jasper to others, usually concerning billing for legal services rendered. A few others are by females in the Yeats family. These tend to be personal letters to relatives. One is a 1774 letter from Sarah Yeats (Jasper's daughter?) to "Grandma" Shippen in Lancaster.

In 1804, the correspondence section gets a bit lively with a March 6 entry that is not a letter but a copy of excerpts from a Committee on Grievances report with "resolves." The grievance was against the PA Supreme Court judges, and the proposed remedy was impeachment, apparently of the whole lot. However, the committee tied 14 to 14 on the question of impeachment, so it resolved to send the matter back to the PA House of Representatives to do with what they wished.

§ Legal papers: Accounts: This section contains papers dealing with financial matters, mostly of Jasper's law practice, but the papers are not limited to account books. Some papers do contain itemized lists in pounds or dollars, but the section also contains a variety of receipts and other legal documents, including printed form documents with the particulars filled in by hand. For a researcher interested in the detailed history of law practice, of civil law in action, or of land transactions, this section (the whole set of papers in fact) could be of interest.

§ Legal papers: Letters of agreement: The contents of this section are more legal documents from Jasper's law practice. Many more such documents are contained in the Accounts and Bonds sections, but a few have been placed separately in what once was a separate folder of papers.

§ Legal papers: Bonds: The documents in this section are mostly printed forms filled in by hand concerning the binding of individuals to pay debts to or through the government. (I do not understand well the nature of these bonds and did not research them further. Some of them may relate to indentures but others appear to pertain to money debts. The form itself left me quite confused.)

Have something you want to share? A research question, a research find, or a personal story about the Library? Email Patrick Spero at spero@dlar.org

Labels: acquisitions, archives, documents, research, swain report