A Q&A with David Brigham, CEO of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Created just 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is now celebrating 200 years in operation, and is commemorating the occasion with unique exhibits and materials for history buffs both big and small. City & State recently spoke with David R. Brigham, the CEO and librarian of the society, about how the Historical Society is marking more than two centuries of history, and how Americans can see it for themselves before the year ends. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Why was the Historical Society of Pennsylvania created?In 1824, the nation was coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So much like we're thinking about the 250th right now, Philadelphians and Americans, more broadly, were thinking about the nation's first 50th anniversary. Among the things that were on their minds in that way was the fact that there were very few survivors of the founding generation at that point, among the leadership anyway. It was a small and dwindling number, and so there was a consciousness that the memory was slipping away of that founding moment, and Philadelphia and Pennsylvania were so vitally important to the nation's founding, there were people in the community who felt that we really needed a historical society to preserve letters, documents, basically the nation's story and how it related to the commonwealth. So that was one impetus. Another aspect of that was the fact that Marquis de La Fayette was planning to visit the United States, and did visit the United States in 1824. So that renewed interest in the revolution as well. Lafayette was specifically interested in seeing firsthand how the nation was thriving as it approached its first 50th anniversary. So there was that. 

Secondly, one of the drivers of our founding was a man named Peter Du Ponceau, who started a dinner to honor William Penn and his arrival in Pennsylvania and the start of the Pennsylvania colony. He believed that William Penn was at least as essential to establishing our national values as the Puritans were. The Mayflower descendants were hosting an annual dinner, and Du Ponceau said, “Look, we should have a William Penn dinner here in Pennsylvania.” So he started that, and he was very conscious of history and its importance, not only as a way of looking backward but as a way of planning the future. He was very articulate about that, and as were the other founders. So it was not founded simply as a memory bank, but also as a way of using the lessons of the past to plan a better future. 

They were also very insistent that the history that we preserve should include not only the great men but also people from all walks of life. So, I think, those things created an unusual set of ideas that we still carry forward in the 21st century. The first president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania was a man named William Rawle, who was a prominent attorney. He was also very active in The Pennsylvania Abolition Society, which created the first law for abolition in the United States. We refer to it as the gradual abolition act. It passed in 1780, and the papers of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society are here at HSP. So that's one example of a story that goes beyond the great men of the founding generation. It's a story that obviously was about living up to our expressed ideals of the founding generation in a much more inclusive way, and of recognizing the immorality and the conflict of slavery vis a vis those founding principles.

What types of resources and things does the Historical Society of Pennsylvania offer?

What we are best known for is our collection of unique materials, so manuscripts and graphic arts, drawings, prints, photographs, rare and unique items – and we have close to 22 million items in the collection, and of those – probably more than 95% – are one-of-a-kind, original documents, and they span all the way back to 14th-century Europe. Our primary focus is American history, and within that, Pennsylvania history being what we're best known for and what we have the greatest depth in. … 

We are a research library. Everyone is welcome. We're open to the public – we're open four days a week with public hours, and we're here on staff in the building five days a week. We do serve people all five days out of the business week, but the public hours for the library are Tuesday through Friday. We serve a scholarly audience. We serve a family history audience, genealogy audience. We serve a middle school and high school audience, both students and teachers. We serve creatives, artists, writers, composers, playwrights, documentarians, and people who live in the community – they want to know how their neighborhood has evolved. Who lived in their house when it was first built, what the neighborhood was like where they live now. We get research inquiries from developers, from people who are concerned about development. We get questions about property disputes and all kinds of things. So people come to us for many, many different reasons. 

In addition to the library function, we have a very active learning and engagement department. We do a lot of public lectures. We have a genealogy series this year, it's called “People in Pennsylvania,” and it's about six ethnic groups that have come to America in different ways at different times. And it's connected to the genealogy part of our mission, where if your ancestors are from Germany, it's going to lead you to a certain kind of research track if you're looking for your ancestors, as opposed to if you came from Ireland or the British Isles. We also are very strong in African American genealogy, which can get challenging going backward prior to the Civil War. We have, again, remarkable records that can help people break through the barriers that are sometimes imposed by the institution of slavery or the lack of public record keeping for certain ethnic and racial groups. 

We also are the host and organizers for the Philadelphia Chapter of National History Day. National History Day is a middle and high school program, and it is really pretty remarkable. It gives young people the chance to work with primary documents, original documents like we house here at HSP, to pick a topic of their own selection, to dive into that, to come here and use our collections and then create a project. … We do not charge any fees. They're all grant-supported, so there's no cost barrier to participation.

As part of the society’s 200th anniversary, one exhibit featured was: Cartoons as Political Speech in Colonial and Contemporary America. What did that exhibit showcase?

It grew out of this book project because, in addition to meeting regularly with the editorial committee, I would spend hours in the stacks just opening boxes and opening drawers, and I kept stumbling across little troves of political cartoons – thousands of them going back to the 18th century  – the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-66 and some of the rumblings – mainly around taxation and the various taxes that were passed in the 1760s and early 1770s – that really led to the rhetoric of the American Revolution. Themes like taxation without representation, ideas about government by consent, founding principles like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, things like that really bubble up. What surprised me was about half of the cartoons in our collection from that period were published in London, and with only one exception, all the London cartoons are pro-American. 

What’s your elevator pitch to get people to come visit PHS?

I obviously love this place. I'm very passionate about it. First of all, it's fun. I think we don't always like the history we grew up with in high school. A lot of us, even myself, wouldn't necessarily describe it as fun, but we actually have fun here. It's interesting, it's informative. I think that we often hear, “Oh, the founders said this, or the founders did that.” Well, in many cases, we actually have the original documents. So if you want the truth, if you want the facts, they're probably here in our collection. It may take some digging, but that's part of the fun – the hunt, the discovery.