The Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society

The Lancaster Mennonite Conference Historical Society IRA D. LANDIS The Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society was started in the basement of the Eastem Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities in Salunga, Lancaster Co., about 1956. Chartered 15 May 1961, we moved to our present headquarters in a new building in June 1964, five and a half miles east of Penn Square, Lancaster, on the Lincoln Highway East. The exact address is 2215 Mill Stream Road, Lancaster, Pa. 17602. The 50,000 volume library is a center for Mennonite and Amish studies as well as for local, secular history, and theology. Our facility includes an underground vault 37 feet by 70 feet where moisture and temperature are under control for the preservation of paper, especially rare items. The vault is under six feet of asphalt, ground, and concrete. Aside from Beacon Hill, Boston, and the Delaware state depository at Dover, there are no similar preservation facilities known in the East. A second specialty is our Pennsylvania Dutch genealogical center. We have over 100,000 cards on vital statistics, 11,000 cards on Franklin County cemetery records and hundreds of other cemetery records near and far, 11,000 cards on abstracts of Lancaster County deeds (1729-1836), and also records of wills in abstract (1729-1896). There are more than 600 genealogies, mostly Pennsylvania Dutch. Our publications are the Mennonite Research Journal (since April 1960), a twelve-page quarterly, and a bimonthly Mirror, devoted to history, church history, genealogy, cemetery records, book reviews, especially on southeastern Pennsylvania and the Mennonite Church, but not exclusively. The Mennonite Historical Associates sponsors quarterly lectures, an annual art show, and an annual field trip in September. We are trying to serve especially those persons interested in the Pennsylvania Dutch of Lancaster County and its environs in southeastern Pennsylvania and far beyond. 60