Library Company Acquires the Joe Freedman Collection
of Philadelphia Ephemera

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—September 27, 2013—The Library Company of Philadelphia has acquired
the Joe Freedman Collection of Philadelphia Ephemera, adding to its extensive holdings of historical
ephemera. Compiled over many decades by a distinguished collector with a discerning eye for historical
significance, the collection includes nearly 100 trade cards dating from the mid-18th to the late-19th
century; a portfolio of manuscript maps surveying the early development of South Philadelphia during
the 18th century; one of the earliest printed American bills of fare (ca. 1850); and rare bills of lading
from the press of Benjamin Franklin (1760 and 1761). These are but a few of the gems in a collection of
nearly 900 pieces of ephemera, prints, manuscripts, and books.

The Freedman Collection complements several existing Library Company collection and research
strengths, including women’s history, African American history, philanthropy, Philadelphia urban history,
and, particularly, visual culture and early American economic history. Through a recent ephemera
cataloging project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, an exhibition, and
conference, the Library Company has positioned itself at the forefront of preserving and providing
access to historical ephemera collections.

The Library Company began collecting ephemera in1785, when it acquired the Pièrre Eugène Du
Simitière Collection of Revolutionary War-era pamphlets and broadsides. Today, the institution occupies
a leadership role among research libraries with respect to the collection of and research into early
American printed ephemera, a powerful but still-underused primary resource for historical inquiry.
Highlights of this collection can be viewed in the exhibition Remnants of Everyday Life: Historical
Ephemera in the Workplace, Street, and Home, on display through December 2013. Whimsical
reflections on ephemera by contemporary artists of the Philadelphia Cartoonist Society are also on
display in a small accompanying exhibition.

Off to the Fair

As Co-Director of the Visual Culture Program, I am always on the lookout for new materials to add to the library’s visual culture collections. Ephemera has become a particular focus of my treasure hunting in the last year. Although online marketplaces certainly provide access to a trove of promising new additions to our holdings, a good old fashioned fair – of the paper variety – allows for a more personal experience.

In the last few weeks, The Ephemera Society of America andAllentown Paper Shows have served as opportunities to obtain a variety of commercial ephemera, including a circa-1875 advertising envelope for a local casket maker, a late 19th-century trade card for a Philadelphia burlap bag manufacturer, and a Victorian-era paper toy dining room set promoting the Cosmo Buttermilk Soap Co.

Philadelphia Burial Co. envelope, ca. 1875. Proprietors George W. Hanna, George. M. Hanna, and John W. Hanna.

Back of John T. Bailey & Co. trade card, ca. 1880.

Front of John T. Bailey & Co. trade card, ca. 1880.

Cosmo Buttermilk Soap paper toy promotion, 1895.

From my initial research into these pieces, I have learned a few interesting tidbits; an inevitability with these engaging materials. George W. Hanna and his sons, listed as the proprietors of the Philadelphia Burial Case Co., worked in the funeral trade for fewer than five years before relocating by 1880 to Kansas to farm. John T. Bailey & Co., a premier twine and bag manufacturing company, used this trade card to showcase the building to which their growing sewing department moved in 1880 to meet increased consumer demands. And Jonas J. Burns, the owner of the Chicago soap company that marketed the paper toy furniture in the 1890s, turned out to also be a railway magnate. Small tokens of historical popular culture such as these never cease to enlighten and delight me—as well as the Library Company’s researchers.

These items are just the newest additions to our illustrious collections of historical ephemera, highlights of which will be on display in Remnants of Everyday Life: Historical Ephemera in the Workplace, Street, and Home May 13-December 13, 2013.

Erika Piola
Associate Curator, Prints and Photographs