Scope and Content

The collection contains records, 1831-1983 (bulk 1831-1949) of the Leake and Watts Children's Home (known originally as the Leake and Watts Orphan House, and since 2018 as Rising Ground) and records of two other child care agencies that merged into it: The Orphans' Home and Asylum of the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York (1851-1947), and the Sevilla-Hopewell Society (1947-1948). The Sevilla-Hopewell Society was a merger of The Sevilla Home for Children (1889-1947) with The Hopewell Society of Brooklyn (1921-1947), originally named The Society for the Aid of Friendless Women and Children (1869-1921). The collection contains records going back to the founding of each organization.

Materials include, but are not limited to, minutes, annual and other reports, registers of admissions/discharges, financial records, correspondence, visitor's books, real estate records, scrapbooks, photographic prints and printing blocks, and bibles.

Also included (although not an integral part of above) are 10 volumes of rent, letter and account books, 1802-1865, relating to land in Masonville, Delaware County, New York originally owned by Rev. John Mason Knox, who also servced circa 1860's as Leake and Watts' treasurer.

Unusual materials include an 1843 "punishment book" recording the behavior of individual boys and discipline administered.