The Wister Family Papers were acquired from the family of former La Salle University faculty member James Butler, who obtained items using multiple methods, after his passing in 2020. Butler conducted extensive research on the historic residences on La Salle University’s campus, with a particular interest in Peale House or the Belfield estate, and the families who lived there.

It encompasses members of the Wister family, families related to the Wisters through marriage, locations and buildings significant to these families, and includes supplemental research by James Butler. Significant portions pertain to Owen and Mary Channing Wister, Belfield, and Germantown. The collection contains letters, photographs, estate inventories, legal documents, maps, newspaper clippings, publications, drafts of published work, genealogies, and miscellaneous ephemeral materials. The bulk of the collection dates in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Supplemental research includes older dates, such as William Penn granting the Belfield land in Germantown to Thomas Bowman in 1684, and later dates including materials that involve Belfield as part of La Salle University in the early 2000’s. This collection may be useful for researchers of individual Wister family members such as Owen and Mary Channing Wister. It might also be appropriate for those researching the histories of La Salle University and Germantown, the American Revolution and the Civil War, Philadelphia’s civic activism to social and political conditions of the time, manufacturing, philanthropy, women’s history, Quakerism, immigration, and the American West in fiction.