Blog

One in a series highlighting some of our holdings at the Library in
Oakland. For a fuller listing of books, journals, and more, consult the CGS Library catalog in WorldCat.

Our Pennsylvania collection is one of the largest I’ve
reviewed so far, with over thirty shelves of print books. No doubt there is much
more to be found on our catalog. This short blog post cannot begin to
cover what is available, so if you have Pennsylvania ancestors you need to
schedule a visit to our library and budget plenty of time.

The section starts with just a few issues of the Pennsylvania
Dutchman from 1956-1958. This is a charming, informative and
well-illustrated journal worthy of review–even if just for fun. We have a
large set of Pennsylvania Archives from 1852 that includes “original
documents from the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth conformably to
acts of the General Assembly February 1851 to March 1852.” This volume has a
very interesting fold-out of “Indian Auto-Graphs” from 1682 to 1785. These are
sketched depictions of Native American signatures.

“Indian Auto-Graphs 1682-1785” from Pennsylvania Archives

We have several sets of journals. The Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography starts in 1960 and continues to July
2009. This appears to be a scholarly journal published by the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania. Our Keystone Families, Vol. 1 by Schuyler C. Brossman features a collection of weekly
newspaper columns that were published in the Lebanon News from Oct 1966 to Oct 1969.

All of these volumes are Pennsylvania Archives

Our shelves hold ten volumes of Philadelphia Wills
covering the period 1682 to 1825. These were compiled by the Genealogical
Society of Pennsylvania and consist of copies of handwritten abstracts of
wills.

Our shelves also host three volumes of Pennsylvania German
Society proceedings, published in 1934. This is a publication of
the original lists of arrivals to the Port of Philadelphia from 1727 to 1808.
Each volume is packed with details and lists of persons who arrived at various
times. Other groups represented in our Pennsylvania collection are the
Palatines, Huguenots, Welsh and Scotch-Irish.

A side note: at our June CGS board meeting earlier this month Vice President Jim Sorenson reported from the 50th
annual Jamboree in Los Angeles that Family History Library director David Rencher announced that they
are reconsidering the earlier decision to remove most of their books. Current
plans for Salt Lake City are to return some of the books to their shelves to
augment computer research. Fortunately, we at CGS are way ahead of them!