Pennsylvania Colonial Records, 1600s-1800s

Pennsylvania's most influential early settlement was organized by a Quaker, William Penn. Chartered in 1681 by King Charles II, Penn's colony was primarily made up of English Quakers (many of whom were referenced in the book Persons Naturalized in the Province of Pennsylvania, 1740-1773 included as part of this data set) but also included German, Dutch, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish. Over the next century, Penn's "Holy Experiment" attracted huge groups of immigrants to Pennsylvania.

The eleven titles reproduced here were originally published by the Genealogical Publishing Company and include a variety of records that are comprehensive in their coverage of early Pennsylvania. Much of the importance of this collection stems from the fact that neither the State of Pennsylvania nor its individual counties had a centralized system of collecting vital information prior to late 1800s.

Among the unique resources included here, you'll find abstracts of Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette arranged chronologically from 1728 through 1755. You'll also find the esteemed series known as Colonial Records. Comprised of the first sixteen volumes of the Pennsylvania Archives, this series is often referred to as one of the cornerstones of early American record sources.

Copyright information for each volume can be found on its copyright page. If you wish to cite information found in one of this data set's volumes, we recommend using the following format:

Author's Last Name, Author's First Name. "Book Title." Place of Publication: Publisher. Copyright Date. Page Numbers. Reproduced on Genealogy.com's Online Data Set #512 (Pennsylvania Colonial Records, 1600s-1800s).

Books Included in this Data Set

Virginia Court Records in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Records of the District of West Augusta and Ohio and Yohogania Counties, Virginia 1775-1780

Index to Pennsylvania's Colonial Records Series

Early Pennsylvania Land Records, Minutes of the Board of Property of the Province of Pennsylvania

Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania, Volumes I, II, and III

Names of Foreigners who Took the Oath of Allegiance to the Province and State of Pennsylvania, 1727-1775

Persons Naturalized in the Province of Pennsylvania, 1740-1773

Names of Persons who Took the Oath of Allegiance to the State of Pennsylvania Between the Years 1777 and 1789

Abstracts from Ben Franklin's 'Pennsylvania Gazette,' 1728-1748

Genealogical Abstracts from 'The American Weekly Mercury,' 1719-1746