Brethren Archive Gets New Digital Home
It has been a while since the Brethren Church Archives shared developments about its work with the denomination beyond its regular reports at General Conference. We hope that you are aware that after the sale of the National Office building on College Avenue in 2019, the archives joined with the Brethren Church National Office in moving into the Shultz Academic Center on the Ashland Theological Seminary campus. The BCNO occupies the front of the building while the archives occupy the three rooms at the back. The largest room, which is at the northwest corner of the building, is where we have all the shelving with Brethren-related books, including our rare books, and periodical literature. The middle room houses boxes and filing cabinets. It has records related to all the national conferences, boards, committees, and auxiliary organizations as well as district conferences, boards, and committees. There are numerous photos and taped recordings related to Brethren groups and activities, including our international work. The front room is our work area where researchers can use items from the archive and where we process items that are donated to the collection.
All the work related to the archives is performed by volunteers. Two people are the primary volunteers. Dave Roepke, now retired, was the archivist at Ashland University. He is actively involved in digitizing a variety of records related to the Brethren Church. Dale Stoffer is the emeritus professor of historical theology at Ashland Theological Seminary and continues to write on topics related to our Brethren heritage.
Over the last two years, we have been actively pursuing local, state, and federal grants for the archives. After three failed attempts, we finally had a grant approved through the Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board for their historical records grant offering. We made a modest request for $750 and received notice in June 2022 that we had received the grant. The grant, for which we had to provide matching funds, allowed us to establish an account with PastPerfect, a digital resource that can “house” our electronic historical records. Dave Roepke has been busily uploading our digital archival materials to this site. The National Office was kind enough to supply the matching funds for this grant from the budget line approved by General Conference for the archives. With this funding, the archives now have a much-needed new computer and printer. The web address for the digital historical records is: www.brethrenchurch.org/archive
We want to publicly express our thanks for this significant development made possible by the support received from the national Brethren Church and from the Ohio Historical Records Advisory Board, through funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), National Archives and Records Administration.
During 2022 we added two first editions to our holdings of Brethren hymnbooks. In July we added the scarce 1826 first edition of Die Kleine Lieder Sammlung, and in August we added the extremely rare 1830 first edition of A Choice Selection of Hymns. There are only about three or four known copies of this latter first edition. Both hymnbooks were purchased by funds we have received from our sales of Brethren and other works on eBay.
So what are ways in which you can be involved with the archives?
- Keep in mind that this is your archives! If you would like to visit or do research at the archives, please contact me (Dale Stoffer) at dstoffer@ashland.edu to set up an appointment. The archives is open by appointment only, since we do not have any fulltime or even part-time staff.
- Because we rely on volunteers to staff the archives, if you would like to serve as a volunteer to help us to continue to sort and organize archival materials, please get in touch with me.
- Keep the archives in mind when you run across materials related to the Brethren Church, whether books, photos, documents, local and district church records, etc. Please do not pitch them! Send them our way and we will determine what should be preserved and what should be discarded. Keep in mind that with regionalization any district records should be passed on to the archives.
- If you would like to make a donation to the archives for the acquisition of Brethren-related items and for purchasing supplies for preserving some of our rare or fragile items, checks can be made out to The Brethren Church and designated for the Brethren Church Archives.
- If you are interested in purchasing Brethren-related books and materials from our eBay listings, you can find them under the seller name: auhistorydave
Dale Stoffer







