C. Dallett Hemphill, 56, history professor, scholar on Philadelphia

C. DALLETT HEMPHILL, a professor of American history at Ursinus College for the last 28 years and a leading scholar on Philadelphia, died Friday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital-Center City after a prolonged battle with cancer. She was 56 and lived in Erdenheim, Montgomery County.

Hemphill's academic specialty was the social history of the United States, from the Colonial era into the 19th century. She wrote two books, both published by Oxford University Press: Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America, 1620-1860, and Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History.

Hemphill shared the preoccupations of her generation of historians with social history and women's history. But her independent mind led her to a series of unusual research projects. These ranged from how the French government supplied wives for settlers in Louisiana, and the role of women in 18th-century Quaker meetings, to the importance of sibling relationships in an era when parents often died young and the social safety net had not yet been woven.

Her book on manners attracted some popular interest from people eager to know which knife went where or nostalgic for an earlier, simpler time before class and racial divisions existed. Hemphill would have none of it. She disconcerted listeners to a radio interview when she remarked, "Well, yes, a gentleman was supposed to stand up when a lady entered the room, but that didn't include the Irish washer-woman."

Her career path developed early, as an undergraduate at Princeton.

Piqued that a European history professor had given her a B-plus after disagreeing with one of her papers, Hemphill arranged to spend her junior year in Paris, where she used the French National Archives to research French efforts to settle swampy, mosquito-infested Louisiana, long before it was sold to the United States in 1804.

The territory had little natural attraction for women, particularly, which limited its attraction for men. The French government responded by sending convicted prostitutes and mental patients to its colony.

Hemphill described one case in which a white woman was sent to the New World in her own cage, lowered into a ship's hold for the voyage. When a sailor tried to assault her through the bars, the woman bit off one of his fingers and swallowed it. Hemphill's source was a document she found in the French archives - the 18th-century equivalent of the injured sailor's workmen's-compensation claim.

Hemphill taught an array of American history courses at Ursinus, as well as a course on civic engagement based on Philadelphia government and politics. Instead of focusing on the city's elected officials, Hemphill arranged for her students to interview people who dealt regularly with the city from other perspectives, as neighborhood and civic activists, ward leaders and committee people, political consultants, newspaper reporters and City Hall lobbyists, among others.

In addition to her two books with Oxford, Hemphill had completed the manuscript for a third book, Philadelphia Stories: Twelve People and their Places in America's First City. It combined mini-biographies of lesser-known figures of the Revolution and the new nation with an attentiveness to the places in the city where ordinary Americans struggled to make the vision of the Founding Fathers a living reality.

She was also researching a biography of a 19th-century ancestor, Isaac Mickle, a Camden lawyer and newspaper editor.

Hemphill was also a senior research associate at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She edited its professional journal, Early American Studies, and contributed frequently to other academic publications and projects, including the ongoing video series on Philadelphia produced by former mayoral candidate Sam Katz.

Her last written work took the form of an extended post for a blog run by younger scholars. She advised readers about how to get a scholarly article published. She wrote it from her sick-bed 10 days before she died.

Her interest in sibling relationships came naturally. She grew up in Chestnut Hill, one of eight children of the late Alexander Hemphill, the Philadelphia city controller from 1958 to 1967, and his wife, Jean, who now lives in Oxford, Md. She attended Philadelphia public schools and Ravenhill Academy, in East Falls, graduating from St. Andrew's School, in Middletown, Del., after Ravenhill closed.

After Princeton, Hemphill received her master's degree and doctorate from Brandeis University.

Besides her mother and her husband, she is survived by two sons, Evan and Alexander; sisters Pricie Hanna, Elizabeth Burns, Jean Hemphill, Rebecca Firth, Louisa Zendt and Terry Hemphill; and a brother, Sander Hemphill.

Services: Memorial service 11:30 a.m. Friday at Bomberger Hall on the Ursinus campus, on East Main Street in Collegeville. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Doctors Without Borders.