Preserving Religious History in the Northeast

A ledger kept by Jonathan Edwards. Image courtesy of the Congregational Library.

While writing his dissertation and later his book, Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts (1999), James Cooper traveled between New England towns, exploring fragile seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts stored in church basements. He quickly realized that the records, which document the history of early European settlers in North America, were of inestimable historical value—they were also largely inaccessible and vulnerable. With the American Congregational Library & Archives, he established New England’s Hidden Histories, a project aimed at providing small congregations with a place to store their archives as well as digitize them, at once preserving them for the future and making them digitally accessible to scholars and the general public. And with NEH funding, Cooper was able to transform the project from a part-time effort—something he worked on during summers while he taught at Oklahoma State University—to a full-time endeavor that has preserved and digitized thousands of records from communities across New England.

A manuscript digitized and transcribed on the New England's Hidden Histories website. Image courtesy of the Congregational Library. — A manuscript digitized and transcribed on the New England’s Hidden Histories website. Image courtesy of the Congregational Library.

A church records from Rowley, Massachusetts in the 1660s. Image courtesy of the Congregational Library.

New England’s Hidden Histories documents American social, economic, religious history during the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries through church records and other papers, among them diaries, letters, sermons, and statements of faith written by ordinary churchgoers. Because early churches were central to the lives of their surrounding communities, the records document births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, arguments, debates, and votes, and include information about taxation and local crime. In addition to items documenting the quotidian events of American history, the project has uncovered some unique treasures: the original manuscript church records kept by Jonathan Edwards, two manuscript ledgers of sermons preached during the Salem witchcraft hysteria of 1692–93, and a pre-Civil War ledger of records kept by Rev. Lemuel Haynes, the Congregationalists’ first ordained African American pastor.

Invaluable church records are often stored in closets and attics. Image courtesy of the Congregational Library.

So far, the Congregational Library & Archive has partnered with more than 80 congregations and small historical societies to preserve their collections and make them accessible. In addition to digitizing the materials and creating finding aids, a staff member leads a volunteer effort to transcribe these documents. The collection is used by genealogists and the church congregations, as well as researchers from around the world. For example, Douglas L. Winiarski’s recent Bancroft Prize-winning book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England relied heavily on this collection, as well as those held by other New England congregations, which the project is still working to digitize.