About the Project
The Cope Evans Project is a project by Haverford College Digital Scholarship which explores the items in the Cope Evans Family Papers Collection (1683-2012) curated by the Haverford Quaker & Special Collections. The papers include letters, financial documents, diaries, and shipping information. This project engages with the collection through prose and data visualization.
In the summer of 2014, three Haverford College students, Cormac Quinn Rada ’17, Brandon Smith ’16, and Andrew Kafker ’17, conducted archival research in the Cope Evans Family Papers for their digital project titled “The Cope Evans Project: A History of Quaker Networks During the Industrial Age.” Exploring the argument and themes of Philip S. Benjamin’s influential work The Philadelphia Quakers in the Industrial Age, 1865-1920 (1978), the students documented the numerous social, cultural, economic, and political changes that the Cope family, a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia, faced during a period of rapid industrialization and urbanization in America.
In Summer 2019, the project site was updated by Aleena Maryam ’21. Old student visualizations and essays were moved, a new letters map was created, and an essay about J. Morris Evans, the sole donor of the collection, was added.
As part of an Anne T. and J. Morris Evans Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship, in 2023-2024, the project was again updated to restore functionality and update and expand contextual essays.
About the Collections
The Cope Evans Project draws from digitized material in Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections. The Cope Evans Family Papers collection hosted on the TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections features over 5,000 items from four physical collections: Cope-Evans Family papers (HC.MC.1170 and HC.MC.1242), Portraits & Miscellaneous Photographs (HC.MC.850), and the Fine Art Collection. The Clementine Cope scrapbook is part of the Woodbourne Orchards and family of Francis R. Cope Jr. collection (HC.MC.1230), which is also available through the TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections under the same name.
The three instances of the Cope Evans Family Papers contain the letters of two closely related, prominent Quaker families who lived primarily in Germantown, Pennsylvania. HC.MC.1170 contains material created between 1732 and 1911, while HC.MC.1242, an addition to HC.MC.1170, contains material created between 1683 and 2012 and also contains material from the Drinker and Stokes families. Other collections in the Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections focus on specific members or branches of the Cope-Evans family.
Letters discuss family, friends and home life, and reflect the social environment of these Quaker families. Other topics to be found within the letters include Philadelphia history, Haverford history, travels in Europe, education, illness and death, and discussions of national events such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln and McKinley. They are a rich source of information on a large number of topics.
Haverford began to digitize MC.1170 in 2002 through the support of the J. Morris and Anne T. Evans Fund as a pilot project for the creation of a digital library to serve the Tri-College Consortium, and completed the digitization of correspondence in the collection in 2009. In combination with that milestone, The Accustomed Message was published to highlight the digitization of the collection and present a series of essays engaging with it. Digitization of MC.1242 was begun in 2016 and remains a continuing project.
Cope-Evans Collections
This is not a complete listing of all material related to the Cope-Evans family in Quaker & Special Collections. Rather, it highlights the collections in which the family is a primary focus. For a more complete listing, visit archives.tricolib.brynmawr.edu
Cope-Evans Family papers, 1732-1911 HC.MC-1170
Cope-Evans Family papers, 1683-2012 HC.MC-1242
Evans family papers, 1752-1958 HC.MC-1007
Stokes-Evans-Cope Family papers, 1713-1981 HC.MC-1169
Rhoads-Evans-Garrett Family Papers, 1699-2011 HC.MC-1331
Woodbourne Orchards and family of Francis R. Cope Jr., 1848-1997 HC.MC-1230
Papers relating to Woodbourne Orchard, 1862-1928 HC.MC-1230-B
Thomas Evans papers, 1704-1868 HC.MC-1324
Cope & Mendenhall letterbooks, 1788-1853 HC.MC-1323
Charles Evans papers, 1681-1860 HC.MC-1006
Thomas P. Cope Family papers, 1795-1891 HC.MC-1013
Morris Evans Leeds papers, 1862-1944 HC.MC-1014
William Bacon Evans papers, 1787-1963 HC.MC-1020
Marmaduke Cooper Cope collection, 1843-1874 HC.MC-1022
Morris Evans Leeds papers, 1757-1952 HC.MC-1127
Caleb Cope and family papers, 1848-1929 HC.MC-1222
Hannah Bacon Evans letters, 1888-1925 HC.MC-1252
Frank Evans collection, 1776-1978 HC.MC-1311
Edward Drinker Cope notebooks, 1854-1858 HC.MC-801-11-010
Cope family correspondence, 1833-1855 HC.MC-950-043
Gilbert Cope papers, 1868 HC.MC-950-044
Thomas Cope legal papers, 1911-1912 HC.MC-950-045
Cope-Collins-Morris papers, 1834-1878 HC.MC-950-046
Christopher Evans papers, 1698-1737, 1824-1865, undated HC.MC-950-068
Thomas P. Cope estate settlement papers, 1908-1914 HC.MC-950-193
Caroline Cope Hartshorne letters, 1867 HC.MC-950-196
Edward Drinker Cope papers, 1848-1940 HC.MC-956
Thomas Pim Cope diaries, 1882-1899 HC.MC-975-01-013
Charles Evans diary, 1861 HC.MC-975-01-023
Elizabeth Reeve Evans diaries, 1882-1899 HC.MC-975-01-024
Thomas P. Cope letters, 1889 HC.MC-975-02-005
Sarah Wistar Cope commonplace books, 1824 HC.MC-975-03-008
Annie Pim commonplace book, 1857-1864 HC.MC-975-03-029
Caroline Cope Yarnall Hartshorne commonplace book, 1848-1868 HC.MC-975-03-047
Jonathan Evans scrapbook, 1817 HC.MC-975-04-022
Julia Cope Collins signature album, 1879-1884 HC.MC-975-05-001
Cope family financial records, 1789-1883 HC.MC-975-08-005
Francis Cope Haines gardening notebook, 1900-1906 HC.MC-975-11-015
Thomas P. Cope packetship logbooks, 1817-1876 HC.MC-975-11-009
David Cope Elkinton photograph album, 1934-1935 HCS-003-003
Thomas Pim Cope Jr. commonplace book, 1835 HCS-003-046
Alexis T. Cope senior oration, 1868 HCS-003-076
About J. Morris Evans
J. Morris “Morrie” Evans (1921-2017) was a member of Haverford College’s class of 1943. He donated the entirety of the Cope-Evans Family papers (HC.MC.1170 and HC.MC.1242) to Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections in 1994 and 2015, respectively. The digitization and cataloging process was funded by the J. Morris and Anne T. Evans Fund.
In the Record of the Class of 1943, the Haverford College yearbook, Evans is described as “our one real athlete” by his peers because of the number of varsity sports he participated in. He played soccer, basketball, and ran track. His peers described him as a clever man, and it was perhaps this same cleverness that aided him in his business career.
Evans married Anne Tall, a graduate of Germantown Friends School and Vassar College, a year after graduating from Haverford. They were married until her death in 2012. Evans was a conscientious objector during World War II. He worked on farms as a form of alternative service. After the war, he began work as an accountant at the Philadelphia Quartz company, later the PQ corporation, subsequently serving as vice president and treasurer. Evans additionally served as the vice president of the Haverford Corporation from 1972 to 1979 and as the president from 1979 to 1988.
In his free time, Evans compiled documents concerning previous generations of the Cope Evans family. In addition, he carefully managed the documents he and his family produced during his lifetime, including photographs and letters, resulting in over 5000 documents (including letters, records and diaries) spanning 1683 to 2012. He wrote a biography of Thomas Pim Cope around 2002 which he distributed amongst family. The biography and J. Morris Evans’ notes are available in the physical collection. Scraps of Evans’ notes can be found in Haverford’s digital collections, such as this page which contains excerpts from Thomas Pim Cope’s journals where he talks about the ship “Rebecca.” There are several such excerpts with notes about a variety of ships. In this letter, Evans briefly discusses the book with relatives who expressed interest in it.
Evans’ hobby was a social one. Upon finding a transcript of the “Echoes of the Cope Evans Christmas Dinner,” a family dinner which took place at Sylvia and Harold Evans’ home, he made a point of drawing Sylvia Evans’ attention to it as evidenced in her letter of thanks to him. The transcript records 25 sets of verses, each describing a particular person present at the dinner; a different item was awarded to each person described in one of the sets. Sylvia Evans appreciated the memories the transcript brought back for her. She also told Evans of her interest in Johnathan Evans, likely expecting him to have the knowledge to point her to the relevant resources. J. Morris Evans was invaluable when his friends and colleagues had questions concerning the Cope Evans history.
J. Morris Evans actively managed the materials. He would pass along pieces when people requested them from him. In this letter, he urges William Elkinton Evans to return a batch of family letters because they’ll likely be requested by someone else. The letter suggests that people would borrow items from Evans for projects. This is an example of how Evans would support scholarship. Also, Evans says here that sharing family mementos with extended family brings him joy.
Evans kept 96 letters that he or his wife wrote to his mother. It is common for these letters to appear on what seems to be Anne T. Evans’ stationery. In his letters, Evans would keep his mother informed of his family’s excursions and general welfare. This letter, in which Evans details the family’s vacation stay near a beach, is an example. Other family correspondence includes postcards from his parents as they stayed in places defined by their natural beauty such as Yosemite National Park.
Evans generously donated to the Haverford Libraries in a myriad of ways. He supported Haverford College Digital Scholarship Projects like “Who Killed Sarah Stout?”, a project which involved developing a clue-based game in which players try to piece together the cause of Quaker Sarah Stout’s mysterious death. The J. Morris and Anne T. Evans Fund has also supported the digitization of Quaker materials, and has been instrumental in the development of various digital projects. The fund also supports the Anne T. and J. Morris Evans Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship, begun in 2020. This two-year Fellowship supports recent graduates who are interested in going into the library, archives, history, or digital scholarship fields, in learning competencies in these fields which will enhance their skill base for their careers.
The majority of his donations concern the Cope Evans family experience across centuries, but a subset of the collection is composed of papers he collected throughout his life. The documents concerning Evans’ own life go as far back as 1930, when Evans would have been eight or nine years of age. In this letter, for example, he wishes his grandmother a happy birthday and tells her about a boy named Francis capsizing in a pond. The fact that he retained a document from so early on in his life shows the care with which Evans archived.
Haverford College, Haverford College Libraries, and a number of scholars have greatly benefited from the efforts of J. Morris Evans.
Credits
Version 1.0
Student Curators
Andrew Kafker, Haverford College ’17
Cormac Quinn Rada, Haverford College ’17
Brandon Smith, Haverford College ’16
Jean Leighton, Haverford College ’17
Nhi Nguyen, Haverford College ’18
Sarah Roth, Haverford College ’17
Editor
Stephanie Lampkin, Department of History, University of Delaware
Additional Contributors
Laurie Allen, Coordinator for Digital Scholarship and Services
Sarah Horowitz, Head of Special Collections
Ann Upton, Curator of Quaker Collections
Mike Zarafonetis, Digital Scholarship Librarian
Version 2.0
Student Developer
Aleena Maryam, Haverford College ‘21
Version 3.0
Anna Smith, 2022-2024 Anne T. and J. Morris Evans Post-Baccalaureate Fellow
Emilie Barrett, Metadata Librarian
Mary Crauderueff, Curator of Quaker Collections
Anna Lacy, Digital Scholarship Librarian
Morgan Soutos, Haverford College ‘24
Additional Contributors
Yasmine Ayad ‘19, Quaker & Special Collections Intern, 2017
Deanna Bailey ’12, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2008-2009
Sarah Banks ’05, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2002
Karl-Rainer Blumenthal ’06, Digital Archives Fellow, 2006-2007
Sara Bornstein ’09, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2008
Leila Breen ‘20, Quaker & Special Collections Intern, 2018
Janet Bunde ’02, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2002
Brian Carpenter, Cope-Evans Intern, 2008
David Conners, Digital Collections Librarian
Jared I. Dowel ’03, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2002
Christopher Haagen ’07, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2006-2007
Thea Hogarth ’11, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2007-2009
Hannah Lonky ’10, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2008
Kyle McCloskey ’11, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2008-2009
Claire McGuire, Digital Archives Fellow, 2002-2004
Mary Metzger, Cope-Evans Intern, 2002
Mara Miller ’10, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2007-2008
Luke Mueller, Cope-Evans Intern, 2008
Aaron Sterngass ‘19, Quaker & Special Collections Intern, 2018
Amy Stewart ’05, Cope-Evans Student Assistant, 2002-2003
Emily Thaisrivongs, Metadata Librarian
Style Guide
The typeface of this website is Lato, the preferred sans serif of Haverford College for digital use. The colors are drawn from Flower Studies by Annette Cope, a series of watercolors created between 1879 and 1883, and were chosen to ensure accessibility as verified by WebAIM’s Contrast Checker. Hex values for each element of the site are listed below.
Text:
- Heading: Lato, Bold, #4c0a0d
- Subheading: Lato, Italic, #153a0b
- Body text: Lato, #1c1614
- Link text: Lato, underline, #647402
Background:
- #f9efd7
The “C” dragon illustration used as the site icon is from Clementine Cope’s letter to Elizabeth Stewardson Cope dated 1878 June 22, Wells.