[2] These families were influential in the development and leadership of arts, culture, science, medicine, law, politics, industry and trade in the United States.
[2] They were almost exclusively white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs),[3] and most belonged to the Episcopal church and Quakerism.
[4] In 1963, Nathaniel Burt, a chronicler of Old Philadelphia, wrote that of Philadelphia's most notable early figures were listed in "the ancient rhyme, rather out-of-date now, called the Philadelphia Rosary," which goes: Burt's full list of prominent families (with those in the poem in italics): Annenberg, Bacon, Baer, Baird, Ballard, Baltzell, Barrymore, Barton, Bartram, Berwind, Biddle, Bingham, Binney, Biswanger, Bispham, Bok, Bond, Borie, Bradford, Brinton, Broadbent, Bromley, Brooke, Buckley, Bullitt, Burpee, Cadwalader, Cassatt, Castor, Carey Cheston, Chew, Clark, Clothier, Hadley, Coates, Converse, Cope, Coxe, Cramp, Curtis, Da Costa, Dallas, Dickinson, Disston, Dorrance, Drayton, Drexel, Drinker, Duane, Duke, Elkins, Earle, Emlen, Evans, Fisher, Foulke, Fox, Francis, Franks, Furness, Gates, Geyelin, Gowen, Gratz, Griffith, Griffitts, Griscom, Gross, Grubb, Hamilton, Hare, Harrison, Hart, Hays, Hazard, Henry, Hopkinson, Houston, Huston, Hutchinson, Ingersoll, Jayne, Jeanes, Jones, Keating, Kelly, Landreth, Lea, Lewis, Lippincott, Lloyd, Logan, Lorimer, Lovekin, Lukens, McCall, McKean, McLean, Madeira, Markoe, Matlack, Meade, Meigs, Meredith, Merrick, Middleton, Mitchell, Montgomery, Morgan, Morris, Mummert, Munson, Newbold, Newhall, Newlin, Norris, Oaks, Oakes Packard, Patterson, Paul, Peale, Pegg, Penn, Pennypacker, Penrose, Pepper, Peterson, Pew, Platt, Potts, Powel, Price, Pugh, Rawle, Randolph, Read, Redman, Reed, Rhoads, Rittenhouse, Robbins, Roberts, Rosenbach, Rosengarten, Ross, Rush, Sands, Savage, Scattergood, Scott, Scull, Sergeant, Shelmire, Shippen, Sims, Sinkler, Smith, Stern, Stetson, Stockton, Stokes, Stotesbury, Taft, Thayer, Toland, Townsend, Van Leer, Van Pelt, Van Rensselear, Vauclain, Vaux, Wanamaker, Wetherill, Wharton, Whitaker, Widener, Willing, Wistar, Wister, Wolf, Wood, Wright, and Yarnall.
[6] Many Old Philadelphia families intermarried and their descendants summer in Northeast Harbor, Desert Island, Maine.
[2] Many of these families trace their ancestries back to the original founders of Philadelphia while others entered into aristocracy during the nineteenth century with their profits from commerce and trade or by marrying into established Old Philadelphia families like the Cadwaladers and Biddles and Pitcairns.