Our Work in the Archives: Third Quarter 2024

It was a busy summer for the PHS archival staff, and here we are just a few days away from Halloween! Summer is always a busy time in the Reading Room, and this quarter our Reference Archivists welcomed 78 in-person researchers who spent 143 days in the reading room. They visited from 22 different US states as well as 5 countries, including Japan, South Korea, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. We hosted all four of the 2024 PHS Research Fellows: Luca Azuma ("Upon a Rainbow Cross: a History of LGBTQ+ Christianity in North America"), Elesha Coffman (“Making Religion News”), Emily Conroy-Krutz ("Around the World with the Browns”), and Alderi Matos (“Presbyterianism in Brazil”). Several other researchers focused on the history of various foreign mission fields (Brazil, China, Columbia, Korea, India, and Persia/Iran) as well missions to indigenous peoples in the United States and Alaska.

PHS staff retrieved 917 collection items for researchers and made 1,414 photocopies. Staff responded to 633 reference questions, on broad historical topics (114), genealogy (78), congregational history (82), and mission history (54). In addition to the 309 inquiries made by the general public, we received 88 questions from PC(USA) congregations; 71 questions from students and professors; 61 questions from other institutions; 43 questions from PC(USA) ministers or church members; 26 questions from PC(USA) synods and presbyteries; and 13 questions from PC(USA) agencies or offices. See all the PC(USA) congregations we've served so far this year on this map.

Staff also fielded 289 service requests, including 71 attestations, 36 digitization requests, 43 transcript and education verifications, and 20 Genealogy Record Search and Biographical Research requests.

Cataloging and Metadata Librarian Elaine Shilstut and Archives Technician Maura Weil cataloged 142 new monograph and serial titles, which are now findable in WorldCat. Most of the newly cataloged serials were transferred from our offsite storage facility and had originally been housed at the Historical Foundation in Montreat, North Carolina.

Records Archivist David Staniunas brought in and accessioned 103.6 cubic feet of records in 101 groups. These included the records of 54 congregations, amounting to 50 cubic feet, including 23 active and 31 dissolved PC(USA) congregations.

In July, the Reparative Description Committee—tasked with implementing a reparative and inclusive approach to bibliographic, archival, and digital content description at PHS—completed reparative description work on the Tucson Indian Training School Records (RG 103), a federally supported Presbyterian boarding school that operated from 1888 to 1960 in Tucson, Arizona.

Archives Technician Maura Weil completed processing the Barbara Roche Papers. Roche was the long-serving editor of Presbyterian publications Concern and Horizons, denominational periodicals in New York and Louisville from 1984 to 1997. Processing Archivist Nick Skaggs and David Staniunas completed processing the massive collection (122 cubic feet) of United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations Records, which documents the work of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations (COEMAR) and its predecessor entities as they worked to supervise and execute the UPCUSA's work in ecumenical mission from 1920 to 1972. Nick also completed processing the recently acquired More Light Presbyterians Records (transferred from Rutgers University), and the Amal Halaby and Charles Marks Papers.

With support from our friends in Santa Fe Presbytery, in July, David traveled to New Mexico. He took oral histories with a former nurse at Embudo Hospital, a former mission school worker, and a chaplain and Chicano rights activist who grew up in the Presbyterian mission schools. We’re thankful for the ministry of Rev. Madeline Hart-Andersen, the people of Westminster Presbyterian Church (Santa Fe, N.M.), Emmanuel Presbyterian Church (Peñasco, N.M.), and First Presbyterian Church (Taos, N.M.), and for all our friends in the Land of Enchantment.

As an extension of our work to document ordained Puerto Rican women, in August, David traveled to Asbury Park to interview Rev. Carmen Rosario, longtime minister at Primera Iglesia Presbiteriana Principe de Paz (Asbury Park, N.J.), and professor of Latin American history at Hunter College and the City University of New York (CUNY). We did the interview in English, at her request, to represent the speech of people with Spanish-accented English. You can watch it here.

Also in August, while in Chicago for the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, David took a bus to the new location of McCormick Theological Seminary, and appraised, packed, and shipped the personal papers of the Syrian American McCormick grad and hymn writer Wade Mansour. Mansour spent most of his career in Omaha, Nebraska, and wrote hymns and poems literally day and night – some in honor of notable figures he never met, like Henry Van Dyke, some in honor of figures he knew, like Curtis LeMay.

The digitization team, led by Digital Collections Specialist Allison Davis, scanned 20,623 images, including 5,647 images for the NEH-funded Religious News Service Digitization Project, growing the Religious News Service Photograph Digital Collection by an additional 1,693 new records. Among the total 2,621 new records in Pearl are a 1977 photo album from the National Black Presbyterian Caucus; selections from the recently processed More Light Presbyterians records (RG 548) and COEMAR records (RG 547). You can also find new oral histories, including the Pastoras jubiladas Presbiterianas Puertorriquenas series and the Remembering First & Franklin's LGBTQIA+ History videos.

On September 10, PHS debuted a traveling exhibit, Faith & Justice in the 1960s: Religious News Service Covers Civil Rights, at the Religion News Service 90th Anniversary Symposium & Gala, held at the Fordham Lincoln Center. This exhibit was funded by a grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., and is now installed and viewable in the PHS lobby.