furthering the balch institute legacy: eastern european-related collections at the historical...

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Furthering the Balch Institute Legacy: EasternEuropean-Related Collections at the Historical Societyof PennsylvaniaMatthew N. Lyons MLS and BA a & Gwendolyn Kaminski MA and BFA ba Historical Society of Pennsylvania , 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, USA E-mail:b Historical Society of Pennsylvania , 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, USA E-mail:Published online: 12 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Matthew N. Lyons MLS and BA & Gwendolyn Kaminski MA and BFA (2006) Furthering the Balch InstituteLegacy: Eastern European-Related Collections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Slavic & East European InformationResources, 7:2-3, 121-137, DOI: 10.1300/J167v07n02_07

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Furthering the Balch Institute Legacy:Eastern European-Related Collections

at the Historical Society of PennsylvaniaMatthew N. Lyons

Gwendolyn Kaminski

SUMMARY. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), one of theUnited States’ largest independent research libraries, contains exten-sive manuscript collections documenting the history of eastern Euro-pean immigrants and their descendants. Collections on the history ofSlovak, Polish, Jewish, Lithuanian, and Russian ethnic groups are es-pecially strong. These holdings were acquired from the Balch Institutefor Ethnic Studies, which merged with HSP in 2002, as well as frompost-merger collecting that has continued the Balch Institute’s work indocumenting, interpreting, and celebrating the United States’ diverseethnic and immigrant heritage. [Article copies available for a fee from TheHaworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address:<[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com>© 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

Matthew N. Lyons, MLS, BA, is Senior Manuscripts Librarian, Historical Societyof Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107 USA (E-mail: [email protected]).

Gwendolyn Kaminski, MA, BFA, is Project Archivist, Historical Society of Penn-sylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107 USA (E-mail: [email protected]).

The authors thank Robin Elliot, R. A. Friedman, and Leslie Hunt for help in prepar-ing this article.

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: “Furthering the Balch Institute Legacy: Eastern European-RelatedCollections at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.” Lyons, Matthew N., and Gwendolyn Kaminski.Co-published simultaneously in Slavic & East European Information Resources (The Haworth InformationPress, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 7, No. 2/3, 2006, pp. 121-137; and: Tracking a Diaspora:Émigrés from Russia and Eastern Europe in the Repositories (ed: Anatol Shmelev) The Haworth InformationPress, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2006, pp. 121-137. Single or multiple copies of this article areavailable for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.(EST). E-mail address: [email protected]].

Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com/web/SEEIR© 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1300/J167v07n02_07 121

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KEYWORDS. United States, eastern Europe, east European Ameri-cans, archival resources, archives, Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies,Historical Society of Pennsylvania

BACKGROUND

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) was founded in 1824.Located in Philadelphia, the society maintains a special collections li-brary, sponsors educational programs for teachers and the general pub-lic, and publishes a scholarly journal, a public history magazine, andoccasional books and catalogs. With nearly 600,000 books, pamphlets,serials, and microfilm reels; 19 million manuscripts; and over 300,000graphics items, HSP is a leading center for historical and genealogicalresearch involving Pennsylvania and the greater Philadelphia region, aswell as the founding of the United States.

Even before the Balch Institute merger, HSP had significant holdingsrelated to ethnic and immigrant history, particularly regarding AfricanAmericans, Germans, and Native Americans in Pennsylvania. Itsmanuscript collections related to eastern Europeans, however, mainlyconsisted of the papers of a few Philadelphians who conducted businessor served as diplomats in eastern Europe.

The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies was founded in 1971 to docu-ment and interpret the broad range of ethnic experiences in the UnitedStates. Over its thirty-one year history, the institute gathered approxi-mately 4 million manuscripts, 60,000 printed items, 12,000 graphics,and 4,500 three-dimensional artifacts, documenting over sixty ethnicgroups.

The Balch Institute undertook selective manuscript collecting nation-wide but concentrated primarily on eastern Pennsylvania and neighbor-ing states, and on the period since the Civil War. In the early 1980s,Balch library staff also decided to limit manuscript collecting to “papersand records created by ethnic communities or by organizations that arecreated exclusively to serve them,” as opposed to more generic sourcesthat might also document ethnic diversity, such as “the records of busi-nesses, labor organizations, and public welfare agencies.” Materials tar-geted for collecting included “the personal papers of immigrants andethnic leaders, records of ethnic beneficial and cultural organizations,and records of service agencies and advocacy groups, as well as re-search files and professional papers of scholars in the field.”1

122 Tracking a Diaspora: Émigrés from Russia and Eastern Europe in the Repositories

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Documenting eastern European immigrants and their descendantswas a major part of the Balch Institute’s collecting efforts. Between1983 and 1986, funding from the National Endowment for the Humani-ties enabled the Balch Institute to undertake a regional collecting pro-gram in northeastern Pennsylvania, known as the Anthracite RegionEthnic Archives (AREA) Project. This project and follow-up work inthe same region yielded over 600 linear feet of records and personal pa-pers, the majority of which document eastern European groups. EasternEuropean communities were also solidly represented in the collectionsgathered in the Philadelphia region, including a three-year collectingproject in the early 1990s that was supported by the Pew CharitableTrusts.

As a result of these initiatives, eastern European-related collectionsformed approximately one-fourth of the Balch Institute’s archival hold-ings by number of collections and roughly one-third by linear footage.The Balch Institute’s emphasis on eastern European groups reflected, inpart, the leadership of M. Mark Stolarik, who served as president of theBalch from 1979 to 1991. Dr. Stolarik, who is now professor of historyat the University of Ottawa, specializes in the history of Slovakia, Slo-vak immigrants, and immigration to North America.

In January 2002, the Balch Institute merged with the Historical Soci-ety of Pennsylvania. The merger brought together two distinct but com-plementary collections. With support from the William Penn and Barrafoundations and the National Historical Records and Preservation Com-mission, staff began integrating these collections physically and intel-lectually. The Balch library holdings were moved into the HSP buildingand 4,600 feet of new shelving were installed to accommodate them.Staff merged the online catalogs from the two institutions and preparednew inventories of the newspaper, microfilm, archival, and audio-visualholdings from the Balch Institute. Approximately one-fourth of the for-mer Balch art and artifact holdings were transferred to the archival orprint collections; the remainder was determined to be outside of HSP’scollecting scope. The society is in the process of transferring these arti-facts to other museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution and theAtwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia.

For the archival collections from the Balch Institute, HSP staffmembers took several further steps to improve intellectual control.They updated catalog entries and collection descriptions, reviewedand cross-checked all paper-based administrative records, transferredall accession and provenance information to a collections managementdatabase, and conducted a prioritization survey of all manuscript collec-

Matthew N. Lyons and Gwendolyn Kaminski 123

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tions bigger than one linear foot. This survey, following a methodologythat HSP had previously used for its pre-merger manuscript and graphicholdings, used qualitative and quantitative measures to rank each col-lection’s research value and the state of each collection’s intellectual ac-cess, physical access, physical condition, and quality of housing. Theresulting data provide a consistent yardstick enabling HSP staff to setpriorities for processing and preservation work across all of the inte-grated holdings. The survey data also provided the basis for much of theanalysis presented in this article.

Processing of former Balch archival collections continued after themerger. In 2001, the Balch Institute launched a major processing projectwith funding from the Phoebe W. Haas Charitable Trust. HSP inheritedand continued this project, which processed approximately 500 linearfeet of archival collections in 2002-2005, including five eastern Euro-pean-related collections comprising some 200 linear feet of material. In2006, the Haas Project is slated to process an additional ten formerBalch archival collections, totaling 111 linear feet, which were selectedbased on the prioritization survey. Three of these collections documenteastern European immigrants.

HSP has also continued to collect archival materials documenting east-ern European ethnic and immigrant history. Between 2002 and the end of2005, the society accessioned approximately 100 linear feet of materialby or about eastern European ethnic groups. Most of this consisted of rec-ords of the Russian Brotherhood Organization of the U.S.A., a Philadel-phia-based fraternal benefits group.

OVERVIEW OF THE COLLECTIONS

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania holds almost 300 archivalcollections that document the history of eastern European immigrantsand their descendants. These collections encompass approximately1,000 linear feet of material. They can be broken down by ethnicity asindicated in Table 1.

The assignment of ethnic labels or identities listed in Table 1 followsthe standards implemented by the Balch Institute. Balch staff assignedethnic labels to collections “based on the self-identity of the individualor group that is being described, as well as the identity generally as-cribed to them by others in the community.”2 (We recognize that ethniccategories are complex and sometimes problematic, but that discussionlies beyond the scope of this article.)


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The bulk of the eastern European-related archival collections reflectall of the decades of the twentieth century. The collections document awide range of people, organizations, activities, and experiences. Topicareas that are substantially represented across multiple ethnic groups in-clude the following:

• Fraternal benefit groups. Ethnically based fraternal organizationstypically provided sick and death benefits to members and spon-sored social and cultural activities. Sometimes they also providedloans and educational scholarships, conducted physical fitnessprograms, or engaged in political advocacy work. Because of thevolume of benefit claims records, these collections comprise abouttwo-thirds of the eastern European-related holdings by linear foot-age.

• Politics and community advocacy. The collections document po-litical work by individuals and groups at all levels, from local(mostly Philadelphia) government to ethnically based advocacygroups at the national level to international politics. The latter in-cludes European political leaders in exile during World War II,anti-Soviet activism during the Cold War, and the international Zi-onist movement both before and after Israeli independence.

• Ethnic media. Both newspapers and radio programs are repre-sented. Documentation includes business records, playlists, and


TABLE 1. Eastern European Immigrant Archival Collections at the HistoricalSociety of Pennsylvania

Ethnicity Linear feet (approximate) Number of collections

Slovak 371 68

Polish 290 66

Russian 141 10

Jewish 49 56

Lithuanian 37 28

Carpatho-Rusyn 15 3

Ukrainian 13 17

Hungarian 11 10

Latvian 7 9

Armenian 4 15

Other 10 21

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broadcast recordings, and is complemented by newspaper hold-ings in HSP’s microfilm and print collections.

• War relief and refugees. Several collections document the work ofagencies that assisted refugees, particularly Poles, Lithuanians,and Jews, during and after World War II.

More limited, but still significant, documentation can be found formany other topics, such as women’s history, religious congregationsand organizations, and the arts. Labor movement history is documentedin a few of the Jewish collections; business history is confined mostly tothe beneficials and to media-related companies.

Except for collections that have been processed since the merger, thearrangement and description of collections follows the Balch Institutesystem, which divided processed collections into manuscript collec-tions, small collections, and photo groups. The style and quality of pro-cessing varies widely, and researchers would do well to consult withHSP staff members about access to specific collections. In addition, fortechnical reasons all sound recordings and moving images in the collec-tions are currently closed to researchers.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE COLLECTIONS

Slovak Collections

In terms of both linear footage and number of collections, Slovak-re-lated materials form the largest segment of HSP’s eastern Europeanholdings. The Slovak collections consist primarily of organizational rec-ords, but also include an array of personal and family papers and asmaller selection of church documents. Many of these collections alsohave related photograph groups.

HSP holds several significant collections that document Slovak fra-ternal benefit organizations. The largest of these are the records of theLadies Pennsylvania Slovak Catholic Union (1905-1984) and thePennsylvania Slovak Catholic Union (1902-1984). Founded in 1898in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, the LPSCU is currently headquartered inWilkes-Barre, with lodges in eight other states. The union is an impor-tant example of immigrant women’s organization, investing, and finan-cial self-help in the first half of the twentieth century. The bulk of thecollection consists of death claims and expelled member files, and thereare substantial runs of correspondence, investment records, and min-


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utes, but access to the collection is limited by poor arrangement and aninadequate finding aid. Also headquartered in Wilkes-Barre, the Penn-sylvania Slovak Catholic Union was founded in 1893. The PSCU rec-ords contain extensive member applications, certificates, and claims, aswell as substantial administrative files. The collection is fully pro-cessed.

Additional fraternal benefit holdings include records of the St. Ste-phen’s Society of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1890-1985); the First Slo-vak Wreath of the Free Eagle (1918-1995); the National Slovak Society(1890-1985); and the Presbyterian Beneficial Union, Mt. Carmel, Penn-sylvania Lodge (1901-1983 and juvenile lodge records 1926-1956).There are also several small collections documenting Sokol organiza-tions in Pennsylvania. The Sokol movement uses gymnastic training topromote physical fitness and cultural pride among people of Slovak orSlavic descent. These collections should be cross-referenced with thepapers of Alice Simon (1967-1993), a gymnast and officer of the SlovakGymnastic Union Sokol of America, Bridgeport Wome’s Lodge.

The papers of Vladimir Hurban (1917-1966), Czechoslovak ambas-sador to the United States during World War II, include materials con-cerning the government-in-exile and correspondence with prominentfigures such as Edvard Beneš and Tomáš Masaryk–the first two presi-dents of Czechoslovakia–as well as Jan Masaryk, Alice Masaryk, HanaBeneš, and Jan Dendur. TheVladimir Hurban photographs (1916-1950)primarily document a 1927 trip to Palestine with Tomáš Masaryk. A re-lated collection, the Hurban-Boor Family papers (ca. 1874-1993), in-cludes the diaries of Vladimir Hurban’s wife, Olga Boor Hurban, whichoffer a detailed account of the Hurbans’ daily life from 1936 to 1949.The collection also includes materials concerning the post-World WarII trial of Josef Tiso, the Nazi puppet who ruled Slovakia during WorldWar II.

HSP also holds the papers of Jan Dendur (1898-1988), a Slovak-American journalist, editor, publisher, and teacher who lived in Chi-cago and New York City. The papers, which are almost entirely in Slo-vak, include press clipping scrapbooks and transcript notebooks, as wellas correspondence, Dendur’s writings and speeches, and materials fromvarious Slovak-American organizations.

The papers of Edward J. Behuncik (1918-1993), founder of the Slo-vak World Congress, document the work of various Slovak politicalgroups in the United States and internationally, mainly between the1960s and 1980s. The collection includes minutes, speeches, corre-spondence, clippings, photos, posters, and other artifacts. Also of note


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are the papers of Charles Belohlavek (1903-1983), a journalist whoworked for Slovak-American groups, promoted the establishment of aCzecho-Slovak republic, and founded the Slovak Radio Circle aftermoving to Detroit in 1944. The most substantial part of his collectionconcerns Slovak Garden, a Florida retirement community for SlovakAmericans founded by Belohlavek and his second wife, Maria JergoBelohlavek. The Charles Belohlavek photographs (1927-1981) containimages of family, friends, and Slovak-American organizations.

The records of the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church of the HolyTrinity (1901-1989) are one of the more complete collections in HSP’sholdings documenting an eastern European ethnic church congregation.There are extensive financial records and annual reports for most of the1950s through 1980s, plus lists of congregants, songbooks, and news-letters.

Polish Collections

The Polish Union of the United States of North America was foundedin 1890 as a fraternal benefit society, and it continues to provide life in-surance and scholarship loans to its members. The 203 linear feet of rec-ords (1891-1987) document the union’s national office, headquarteredin Wilkes-Barre, and include death claims, cash surrender files, juveniledivision files, endowment matured reports, and meeting minutes. Therecords include files for policyholders across the country and signifi-cant demographic information about Polish Americans over most of thetwentieth century. Because of inadequate processing the collection isdifficult to access. Documentation of the Polish Union’s internal work-ings can be found mainly in a small collection of unprocessed additions(1917-1986).

The Polish holdings also include several notable personal collec-tions. The Zygmunt Nagorski papers (1920-1970) contain significantcorrespondence and other materials from the World War II period,when Nagorski was a member of the Polish government-in-exile inLondon. The post-war materials, which form the bulk of the collection,document his role as a writer and scholar focused on international lawand relations, U.S. foreign policy, Soviet aggression in Poland, and ef-forts to unify Europe. Nagorski immigrated to the United States in 1951,where he practiced law and served as an officer of the Polish Institutefor Arts and Sciences in New York City. The papers, which are primar-ily in Polish, are well arranged and have a polished finding aid. They are


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supplemented by unprocessed additions (1939-1995) and photographs(1945-1968).3

Eugene Kleban was a member of the Polish Army General Staff and aprisoner of war in Germany during World War II. Like Nagorski, he im-migrated to the United States in 1951, and became an active member ofthe Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences. He received a Ph.D. in sociol-ogy from New York University in 1965, and later became a professor atWagner College. Kleban’s papers (1938-1988) document many phasesof his life, including his case work with displaced persons after WorldWar II at the Ministry of Labour and National Service in Britain, his en-gineering career, sociological writings, and teaching materials. There isa rich assortment of official documents, correspondence, and photo-graphs, as well as student papers, resumes, recommendations, and grantproposals.

Leon Kolankiewicz was a physician, a Philadelphia City Council-man, and a member of several Polish-American organizations. Amonghis papers (1906-1973) are a set of fifty glass slides from Nazi-occupiedPoland, many of which vividly depict the 1939 invasion; also of note isa Polish-language program about the 1932 Olympics. Although thereare two folders of Kolankiewicz’s speeches from the 1940s through the1960s, the collection contains only scattered documentation about theman himself. The collection, scheduled to be processed in 2006, in-cludes extensive correspondence and fundraising initiative records con-cerning Polish war relief during both world wars. These papers shouldbe cross-referenced with the American Relief for Poland records, whichsubstantially document Polish relief work over four decades.

Polish-American journalism is also well represented in HSP’s collec-tions. The Polish Star Publishing Company records (1922-1986) docu-ment the history of Gwiazda, a Philadelphia Polish-language newspaperfounded by Stephan Nowaczyk in 1902. After Nowaczyck’s death in1923, his wife, Frances, and later his daughter, Gertrude, served as pub-lisher. Gwiazda was the official organ first of the Polish Beneficial As-sociation and then, after 1923, of the Union of Polish Women inAmerica. Strengths include financial and advertising records, withlengthy correspondence between Gwiazda and the Pennsylvania Re-publican Party. The related collection of Polish Star Publishing Com-pany photographs (1900-1975) includes prints of the Nowaczyckfamily and their employees, as well as popular entertainers, politicians,and sites throughout Philadelphia.

Other collections documenting Polish-American journalism include theStefan Sokolowski papers (1911-1978) and photographs (ca. 1935-1975).


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Sokolowski served as an editor of Gwiazda and correspondent for otherPolish-American newspapers. See also the Polish-American Journal rec-ords (1939-1992) and the papers of Henry Dende (1900-1985), whoserved as editor of the Polish-American Journal, as well as president ofthe Polish Union of the United States of North America in the late 1970sand early 1980s.

Jewish Collections

While a diverse European Jewry is represented within the Jewish eth-nic collections acquired from the Balch Institute, we will focus here oncollections of Ashkenazi and Eastern European origins. The majority ofthese consist of personal papers.

The Joseph Beck papers (1902-1988) document the work of a socialwelfare administrator involved in resettling Jewish refugees before andduring World War II. Beck was the executive director of the JewishFamily Society of Philadelphia from 1934 to 1942 and of the UnitedService for New Americans from 1942 to 1950. The papers, which areslated to be processed in 2006, richly document his role in several agen-cies and touch on issues of immigration, antisemitism, communism, theNew Deal, labor unions, the Depression, and the role of relief agenciesin wartime undercover work. The collection includes correspondence,autobiographical materials, photographs, clippings, poetry, and essaysand speeches on a variety of social, political, and cultural topics.

The Ossip Walinsky papers (1916-1973) document a labor organizeractive in a wide range of causes. Born in Grodno as Joseph Melechinsky,Walinsky escaped the Russian Empire to Germany following his arrestfor anti-government activities. After briefly settling in London, he immi-grated to the United States in 1912. He served as manager of the Pocket-book Workers Union in New York from 1918 until 1951, when he waselected president of the International Leather Goods, Handbag, Belt, andNovelty Workers Union. Walinsky’s papers provide an in-depth look atJewish labor history, American labor’s support for Zionism and Israel,and the relationship between labor unions and the American Cancer So-ciety. The collection contains Walinsky’s biographical material andmemoirs, correspondence, organizational records, scrapbooks, photo-graphs, and sound recordings.

The Rose L. Bender papers (1929-1946) contain many useful materi-als regarding the Zionist movement and Jewish women’s activism in thetwo decades preceding Israeli independence. The daughter of Lithua-nian immigrants and pioneer Zionists, Bender served as executive di-


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rector of the Philadelphia Zionist Organization of America. Throughreports, clippings and extensive correspondence, the collection docu-ments her involvement in a variety of local and national Jewish organi-zations, including Hadassah, the Zionist Organization of America,Allied Jewish Appeal, the National Jewish Hospital, and the PalestinePavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, as well as her work as adelegate at Zionist congresses in Geneva (1939) and Basel (1946). Anadditional, unprocessed collection of Rose Bender papers (1927-1973)is also rich in Zionist movement ephemera.

HSP holds two collections of the Workmen’s Circle PhiladelphiaDistrict records (1931-1968 and 1940-1981). Founded in 1892 by Rus-sian Jewish immigrants, the Workmen’s Circle has promoted the devel-opment and preservation of Yiddish culture in the United States andhistorically had close ties to the labor movement and the Socialist Party.HSP also holds business records of the Philadelphia edition of the Jew-ish Daily Forward (Forverts) (1927-1960) and, in the print collections,a run of the newspaper from 1967 to 1992.

Lithuanian Collections

The Lithuanian collections generally consist of organizational records.Several collections document the Federation of Lithuanian Women’sClubs, including the records of the National Office (1968-1984), the Phil-adelphia Chapter (1955-1998), and the Committee for Human Rights(1978-1994). The federation campaigned against Soviet control of Lith-uania and also sometimes addressed women’s political issues in theUnited States. These records should be cross-referenced with the papersof Sniega Jurskis (1950-1998), who served as chairman of the humanrights committee from 1978 to 1984. The Jurskis papers include an ar-ray of materials related to the Lithuanian American Republican Club,the Lithuanian Students Association, American Lithuanian Engineersand Architects Association (ALIAS), the Lithuanian American Na-tional Council, and Philadelphijos Lietuviu Veikla newspaper. The pa-pers contain little biographical information about Jurskis, but provide auseful overview of cultural and political activities in the Lithuaniancommunity in the 1960s and 1970s.

Sniega Jurskis also donated a set of records of the Voice of the Lithu-anian Community (1958-1968), a radio program formed in 1949 tobroadcast news and music of Lithuania and the Philadelphia-area Lithu-anian community on WTEL. Most of the collection consists of scriptsand playlists in Lithuanian. A separate, larger collection of Voice of the


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Lithuanian Community records (1908-1992) was donated by Julia Danta,who joined the program in 1986 as one of its twelve broadcasters. Thiscollection includes phonograph records, correspondence, and an exten-sive set of broadcast tapes, as well as program logs that document pro-gramming from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Russian Collections

The two most significant Russian collections are the Andrew Salamapapers (1903-1973) and the Russian Brotherhood Organization records(1919-1969 with additions to 2001). Born and reared in Russia, Salamawas a member of the Chauvre-Souris, a Russian musical group formedby impresario Nikita Balieff, which performed throughout Europe. Af-ter Salama immigrated to the United States in the 1920s, his home inNew Jersey became a gathering place for Russian émigrés. Reviews in-dicate that Salama was a skilled composer and artist. The papers, in bothRussian and English, include Salama’s compositions and arrangements,a scrapbook of ephemera relating to Balieff, music books published inRussia, and other unique or hard-to-find material. Other than the musicand scrapbooks, however, there is little documentation about Salamahimself.

The Russian Brotherhood Organization made its first donation of rec-ords to the Balch Institute in 1996 and has added to them several timessince the Balch-HSP merger. The RBO was established in 1900 to pro-vide protection from hardships for Russian immigrants and their de-scendants in the anthracite mining region of northeastern Pennsylvania.Currently headquartered in Philadelphia, the organization continues toprovide relief for members distressed by injury or illness, and to care forwidows and children of the deceased. Additionally, the organizationaids schools in the “Old Country” and contributes to the preservation ofRussian culture and heritage. The records document RBO’s insurancebusiness, fraternal work, and cultural activities. It also documents theRussian Consolidated Mutual Aid Society of America, another benefi-cial organization that merged insurance operations with the RBO in1965.

Carpatho-Rusyn Collections

A handful of collections document the Carpatho-Rusyn community,which is rooted in the eastern Carpathian mountain region of Europe.The Russian Orthodox Catholic Mutual Aid Society was founded in


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Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1895; its records (1910-1982) are cross-listed under both Carpatho-Rusyn and Russian ethnicities. Becausemany of the society’s records were destroyed in the 1972 HurricaneAgnes floods, this collection represents the national office’s survivinghistorical files. In addition to membership and financial records, exten-sive and detailed minutes document ROCMAS’s relations with otherbeneficial societies, the 1919 influenza epidemic, World War II war re-lief for Russia, and changes to membership and insurance guidelines.Printed materials are extensive and include almanacs, catechism books,and works denouncing perceived Ukrainian dominance. Unfortunately,much of the collection is inadequately arranged or housed, and intellec-tual control remains limited.

The records of the Holy Ghost Byzantine Catholic Church (1913-1991),documenting many aspects of Carpatho-Rusyn and Byzantine Catholichistory in Pennsylvania, constitute another noteworthy compilation.The church was founded in 1891 to serve Philadelphia’s Carpatho-Rusyncommunity. The collection contains correspondence, financial and mem-bership records, photographs, printed materials, and other records of thecongregation and other Greek Catholic religious institutions.

Ukrainian Collections

Personal and family papers predominate among the Ukrainian hold-ings at HSP. The George Vasley papers (1890-1989) touch on severalmajor conflicts of the twentieth century, from the Russian Civil War tothe Cold War. Vasley (Gregory Vasilevsky) was born in Ukraine, fledto Czechoslovakia after the Bolshevik Revolution, came to the UnitedStates in 1948, and settled in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The papers in-clude substantial documentation from his years in Europe and extensivefiles from his personal crusade in the United States against commu-nism and Russian dominance within the Soviet bloc. The collectionalso includes papers of Elzbeta Brazdil Vasley, George Vasley’s wife,and of Czech national poet Ivan Sabinov. The collection is in Czech,Ukrainian, English, and possibly Slovak. Access to the collection islimited by an incomplete finding aid. The George Vasley photographs(1890-1984) document Vasley’s family and service in the Ukrainianarmy in the 1920s, towns in Ukraine and Czechoslovakia, mining andconstruction projects, and Ukrainian cultural events in the UnitedStates. The documentary and aesthetic quality of the images is unusu-ally high.


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The Rybak Family papers (1956-1994) include ephemera from arange of Ukrainian-American religious, cultural, business, and profes-sional organizations, particularly in Philadelphia. The papers also in-clude a newsletter from Camp Grohn, a displaced persons camp inGermany where several family members lived before immigrating tothe United States, and the typescripts of numerous articles by MykolaRybak for Svoboda newspaper.4

The Anna Kobryn Boyko papers (1910-1973) consist primarily of di-aries and other personal writings in Ukrainian. Boyko was active in or-ganizing Ukrainian church and women’s organizations in Philadelphia,and there is a small amount of material about such groups.

Hungarian Collections

Although organizational records form the majority of the Hungarianethnic collections, the Gondos Family papers (1899-1978) are one ofthe highlights of this section. Victor Gondos, a civil engineer, immi-grated to the United States in 1911, eventually settling in Reading,Pennsylvania. Together with his sons, Robert and Victor Jr., he formedGondos and Gondos, an architectural firm headquartered in Philadel-phia, in 1930. The company designed hotels in Atlantic City, state uni-versity buildings, power plants, and public schools. The collectiondocuments this work through correspondence, photographs, officialdocuments, and scrapbooks. To a lesser extent, it also details VictorJr.’s work as a historian and archivist at the National Archives. Addi-tionally, the papers include extensive correspondence between familymembers from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, paintingthe portrait of a family whose members crossed the Atlantic severaltimes. The papers are scheduled to be processed in 2006.

The Hungarian Radio Program records (1983-1991) document ahalf-hour broadcast that aired on Saturdays in Philadelphia on WTEL.The collection includes an extensive set of broadcast recordings andtranscripts, most of which are in Hungarian.

Latvian Collections

Organizational records constitute the bulk of the Latvian ethnic col-lections, although a few church and family collections are also included.The records of the American Latvian Association in the United States(1949-1973) document the association’s role in the campaign for Lat-


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vian independence through public education, lobbying government of-ficials, and networking with other exile and anticommunist groups.Some of the correspondence conveys details concerning the lives of in-dividual Latvian exiles. An additional, unprocessed collection of Amer-ican Latvian Association records (1952-1996) includes instructionalmaterials and songbooks from a Latvian youth camp. Both collectionsare primarily in Latvian. They are augmented by a small collection ofAmerican Latvian Association photographs (1946-1973).

The records of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. John(1897-1936 and unprocessed additions 1893-1995) include minutes,correspondence, photographs, marriage licenses, annual reports, news-letters, and financial records. The additions include letters (in Latvian orEnglish) received by the church from Latvians living in Europe duringthe late 1940s. Many of these letters summarize the author’s family sta-tus, education, and occupational skills and are accompanied by photo-graphs and requests for sponsorship in the United States.

Additional Collections and Non-Archival Holdings

Several small Armenian collections, the most substantial of whichare the unprocessed Alyce Hovsepian Gordon papers (1969-1993), con-tain significant ephemera on a range of Armenian-American organiza-tions in the Philadelphia area and elsewhere. There are also a few smallcollections documenting members of the Croatian, Czech, Romanian,Serbian, and Slovene ethnic communities.

Two multi-ethnic collections include significant emphasis on easternEuropean ethnicities. The Baltic Women’s Council was founded in1947 in Germany and had clubs or representatives in several countriesof western Europe, North America, and South America. The council in-cluded delegations of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian women. Therecords (1948-1987) include minutes, reports, correspondence, statutes,and other items.

The Ethnic Millions Political Action Committee (EMPAC) wasfounded by Michael Novak in 1974 as a national civil rights committeerepresenting white ethnics and supporting better relations betweenblacks and whites. Novak, a Slovak American who had a regular col-umn in the Balch Institute newsletter at one point in the 1980s, went onto become an important figure in the neoconservative movement. TheEMPAC records (1974-ca. 1980s) document Novak’s dialog with edu-cators, journalists, and politicians regarding a range of controversialtopics such as abortion, busing, and affirmative action.


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Complementing these archival collections, eastern European ethnicgroups are also substantially documented through printed materials, mi-crofilm, and sound recordings at HSP. Of particular note are a significantcollection of Yiddish literature and over 185 inventoried newspaper titlesrepresenting a range of eastern European ethnicities.

Additionally, the society holds several hundred commercial phono-graph recordings in a variety of eastern European languages. Whilethere are no clear dates for the recordings, most were recorded on disksproduced between 1915 and 1935 in either New York City or Camden,New Jersey. The languages most significantly represented on thesephonograph sides include Ukrainian (257), Yiddish (244), Lithuanian(207), Hungarian (204), Polish (200), Hebrew (197), and Russian (120).These recordings are currently closed to researchers; funding is neededto reformat them and make them available.

CONCLUSION

This article offers only a brief overview of the Historical Society ofPennsylvania’s eastern European-related archival collections. More de-tailed information may be found in HSP’s finding aids and researchguides, and through HSP’s website (http://www.hsp.org/). Since the2002 merger, HSP has maintained and expanded the eastern Euro-pean-related holdings that were developed by the Balch Institute, andcontinues to improve access to the collections.

One result of the Balch-HSP merger and integration has been to ex-pand the frameworks in which both Balch and HSP collections areviewed. This process has highlighted the importance of ethnicitythroughout HSP’s collections and, conversely, underscores the widerange of potential research topics that the Balch holdings support. Therecords of fraternal benefit societies, for example, contain a wealth ofinformation concerning demographics, women’s history, genealogy,and medical history. Among the eastern European collections as awhole, politics, labor, business, advertising, media and entertainment,and religion are all significantly represented. By drawing these connec-tions, HSP builds on the Balch Institute legacy and helps to fulfill itsrole in documenting the diversity of ethnic experiences in the UnitedStates.


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NOTES

1. Monique Bourque and R. Joseph Anderson, eds., A Guide to Manuscript and Mi-crofilm Collections of The Research Library of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies(Philadelphia: The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, 1992), vii.

2. Bourque and Anderson, ix.3. Also see the related Nagorski collections: a smaller addition to his papers in-

cludes correspondence, article typescripts, speeches, newspapers, one dissertation, andtwo books. A photographic collection contains thirty-seven prints, which consist offamily portraits and informal photos of officers and the Polish government-in-exile.

4. The George Vasley collections also fall under the Czech ethnic grouping, due toVasley’s residence in Czechoslovakia following the Russian Revolution.


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furthering the balch institute legacy: eastern european-related collections at the historical...

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