The APS stewards this unique volume containing the records of those contracted into indentured servitude in Philadelphia from 1771-1775. A majority of the indentured are German immigrants, though there are entries for Irish migrants and one free black man. In the 18th century, immigrants, primarily from Europe, used indentures or labor contracts to pay for their ocean passage.

Many English immigrants signed on to fixed-term contracts before leaving England whereas German migrants often came as “redemptioners.” These migrants promised to pay the captain of the ship their fare upon arrival in Philadelphia. Once in America, they had thirty days to make payment by support from family in America or by signing a labor contract. This put them in an unfavorable bargaining position with potential employers and many were forced to take whatever was offered them.

This scrapbook belonged to Howard Newcomb Potts (1819-1906), a Philadelphia attorney and a vocal nativist and advocate for the Native American Party, the predecessor to the Know-Nothing Party, popular in Philadelphia during this period. The nativist movement, primarily anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, led to violent riots in the 1840s, most notably the Philadelphia riots of 1844, in which mobs of nativists attacked Catholic churches.

In the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement grew in the United States. Charles Davenport (1866-1944), a prominent biologist, led this movement and helped found the Eugenics Record Office. This set of documents from the Committee on Immigration of the Eugenics Research Association show how Davenport, along with other leading scientists, made their case for limiting immigrants based on “bad personal or family history... [and] family tendencies of physical or mental defect or lack of self control that will be prejudicial to the best interests of the United States.”

The Charles B. Davenport Papers held at the APS, contain the professional correspondence of one of America’s best known eugenicists during the period 1915-1935. Documenting all phases of Davenport’s life and career, the collection is an invaluable resource for the study of the history of the eugenics movement in America.

One of the first academic studies of Mexican migration in the early 20th century, Paul Taylor's Mexican Labor in the United States (1928) was based on field research on the first generation of Mexican migrant labor in California, Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Before Taylor’s study, Mexican migration had largely been ignored by the scholarly community or was colored by prejudice.