Digitizing Philadelphia's Historic Congregations

Home | Repositories

Digitizing Philadelphia's Historic Congregations

The churches and synagogues of Philadelphia were gathering places in the 18th and 19th centuries and their records reflect the changing political, social and cultural mores. More than 40,000 scanned images from vestry and trustee minutes, baptismal, birth, marriage and death records, pew rents, accounting records, sermons and correspondence will give researchers opportunities to explore these connections. Collaborating institutions include:

Sponsorship

The documents in this collection are being digitized and made accessible through a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources, 2016-2019. The grant program is made possible by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this website do not necessarily reflect those of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Licensing

Images

All images and their contents from the Digitizing the Records of Philadelphia's Historic Congregations project are free of known copyright restrictions and in the public domain. See the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark page for more information on terms of use:

Metadata

For all manuscript descriptions and other cataloging metadata, the copyright holder is the mansucripts' holding institution. For example, if the manuscript is from Christ Church, then the copyright for the manuscript descriptions and other cataloging metadata is ©2019 Christ Church. The metadata is licensed for use under a Creative Commons CC0 Licensed version 1.0 (CC0-1.0):

For a description of the terms of use, see the Creative Commons deed:

Intended Users

The Digitizing the Records of Philadelphia's Historic Congregations project data presented on OPenn is intended for aggregators, digital humanists, and scholars who have been directed here to procure high-resolution images and their associated metadata. It is presented in a manner most likely to ensure its long-term digital preservation. The images of these manuscripts are accompanied by detailed manuscript descriptions in machine-readable TEI format. Images and TEI manuscript descriptions are added frequently, so check often to see new additions.

African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas

American Baptist Historical Society

Christ Church Philadelphia

Congregation Mikveh Israel

Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Archives

Gloria Dei Church

Presbyterian Historical Society

Saint George's United Methodist Church of Philadelphia

St. Peter's Church of Philadelphia

 Hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries