ROOTS & BRANCHES

An upcoming invitation to speak at the monthly meeting of the Blair County Genealogical Society in Hollidaysburg on Oct. 15 (mark your calendars now!) on “Exploring Pennsylvania’s State Archives and Library” put me in the mood to wax a bit nostalgic on repository research.

Ah, repository research: You know, going to a library, archives, society or center and spending an entire day, sometimes with a passel of books at the seat you selected. Or maybe getting microfilm-reader elbow from cranking away or pushing buttons on those machines that are now mostly gone.

Yes, repository research, which for many of you I suspect, is a bit of a lost art in these days of genealogy behemoths FamilySearch, Ancestry and MyHeritage delivering so much right to your computer desktops.

But I’ve noticed the flip side of that trend: So many people who have absolutely no idea where they got a person’s name, date, place, or other extremely pertinent information—other than “somewhere on the internet.”

When it comes to the Pennsylvania State Archives and the State Library of Pennsylvania, it’s true that many of their assets are accessible online. But there are benefits of visits to these repositories, too.

First, let’s look at the State Archives.

The archives mission (paraphrased) is the collection and maintain state government records—which the for genealogists in particular means everything from original land records and state vital records of birth and death to the many military records, especially in the era up to and including the Civil War, when the federal military was relatively small and the state-based militias were the primary sources of manpower.

The first thing that makes a visit worthwhile is the staff at the archives. They have top-notch people such as Aaron McWilliams (you’ll never be able to stump him on a Revolutionary War question) and Brett Reigh (who cut his teeth before even coming to the archives as an archivist at Historical Society of Pennsylvania and volunteer at the state historic site Cornwall Iron Furnace).

Then there’s the fact of being able hold, touch and copy original documents such as the first steps of the process of land acquisition from the Penn family during the colonial period … including some signed by Penn and his sons!

During the pandemic with its public closures, the State Archives was busy digitizing, including virtually all of its many county records microfilms, and has access to those available in its public search room.

Add that all to the state-of-the-art State Archives building that was unveiled just a couple of years ago, and you have the makings of a great research experience.

And if that’s not enough of a reason to come to Harrisburg, well, then there’s what the State Library offers in person, but that’s next week’s “Roots & Branches” column.

To get more information about the new State Archives (including days and hours of opening), go to its website at the URL, www.PAStateArchives.com