Philadelphia Social History Project Series

Was a pioneering effort by an interdisciplinary group of scholars and students to study the historic social, economic, and demographic dynamics of Philadelphia. Begun as a comparative study of social mobility in a 19th-century city, the PSHP grew into a broad example of 'New Urban History.' Compiled a machine-readable data base unprecedented at the time, including block-by-block description of the 2.5 million persons living in Philadelphia in the years 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 and hundreds of thousands of individual persons and families as well as the city's housing, businesses, manufacturing firms, and transportation facilities. Additionally, the PSHP reconstructed the careers of thousands of ordinary persons to permit longitudinal analysis on the individual level.

Includes the following studies:

• Philadelphia Social History Project: Grid Data, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880
• Philadelphia Social History Project: Manufacturing Data, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 
• Philadelphia Social History Project: Pennsylvania Abolition Society and Society of Friends Manuscript Census Schedules, 1838, 1847, 1856