Nancy Hagedorn compiled database of Philadelphia households of 1775 during NEH fellowship

Nancy L. Hagedorn, associate professor of history, returned to campus this fall after a semester-long National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia during Spring 2012.

While in Philadelphia, she began working on a new project, "On the Waterfrontier: The Philadelphia Waterfront as a Zone of Cultural Interaction, 1700-1830," which is part of a broader comparative study of Atlantic port city waterfronts.

She examined more than 100 published items in the Library Company's collections, as well as numerous visual sources such as maps and advertisements.

In addition, she analyzed a number of manuscripts at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Archives. One of the most exciting and interesting aspects of her work was the compilation of a database of detailed information on more than 4,500 residents of Philadelphia and their households in 1775.

This database will serve as the basis for a GIS mapping project of revolutionary Philadelphia, which she is collaborating on with Ann Deakin, associate professor of geosciences and Geographic Information Systems. The sources and information will also constitute the core of her HIST 495 Capstone seminar in Spring 2013.