DSCN0739.JPGA Summary of the Archival Collection of the First Parish Church

Charles E. Wainwright


Chair, Historical Committee
First Parish Church, UU
Beverly, MA 01915

 

Ever since it’s founding in 1667 the First Parish has been continuously operated as a legal entity, and has generated records that document the actions of its committees and bodies.   The archival collection we have today is all that remains of those early records.  Their relevance reaches across all the major social, legal and administrative aspects of the Church and, in many cases, comprise the only proof we have of its history.

Brief History of the Archives

Archival Holdings

Archival Policy

Organization

Brief History of the Archives

Originally, the Church’s records were kept in the hands of the Minister.  John Hale kept his own journal of Church meetings as well as births and deaths amongst parishioners.  As time went on, and records became more numerous, they were maintained and kept by a Clerk, who was appointed for the task.  One of our more famous Clerks was Robert S Rantoul, in whose hand many of the archival documents of the early 19th century were written. In his later years, Rantoul took a personal hand in organizing and documenting the many historical artifacts of the Church, including the archives.

James A. Marsters assumed the duties of Church historian in the late 19th century.  He is first mentioned in this capacity in 1889, when he supplied photographs of the Church’s one hundredth anniversary celebration of George Washington’s inauguration to a descendant of Joseph Champney.  Marsters grew up in Beverly and attended the First Parish Sunday School, serving as a marshal at its 50th anniversary celebration in 1860.  He served as Director of the Sunday school for many years.  He took a lead role in the organization of both the hundredth anniversary of the Sunday School in 1910 and the two-hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Church in 1917.  We have today scrap books that chronicle the Church building and the Sunday School formation in which the documents have been pasted onto poster board.  While it insured their continued existence of these venerable documents, the glue used as binding also damaged them.  After his death his wife continued to take care of the archives.

In 1942 the archives were utilized by parishioners Bernard Leslie, Charles Ober and Robert Spiller to create a soft-cover publication commemorating the two-hundred-seventy-fifth anniversary of the Church. 

The archives were stored and forgotten until the mid 1970s when a committee headed by Mary Dinardo organized an archival committee to organize and catalog them.  A fine locked wooden book case was purchased and the records were stored in the Prince Room on the first floor with little disturbance until 2000 when Charles Wainwright reinvigorated the Historical Committee and took an interest in their preservation. 

David Shawn of the First Parish Historical Committee, in concert with other Beverly Churches launched the Beverly Archives Project in 2003 to promote the preservation and protection of the records of Beverly public organizations.  In 2004, with grant funding through BAP, a formal archival survey was performed on the First Parish records to determine their condition and how best to maintain and protect them. The recommendations included moving the records out of the old wooden book case and placing them in protective enclosures.  After obtaining training provided through BAP, the Historical Committee acquired space on the second floor in the Controller’s Office and began to process (conserve) the records.

Initial processing efforts were focused on assessing the archival collection and developing a finding aid.  At the outset of the assessment, the archives were spread throughout the Church with the major portion in a locked, wooden book case in the Prince Room.  Additional records were stored in trunks in the Balcony in a bank vault and in the basement.  Mary Dinardo’s committee made things easier by assigning numbers to the items and creating an index card file.  Unfortunately, the acid in the wooden book case contributed to the deterioration of many of the older documents.  In 2006 the Committee requisitioned additional space on the second floor and inserted a steel shelving system to house the archives. 

By 2009 the indexing and re-housing phases of the preservation effort had been completed, and the second volume of the Church’s vital records had been photographed and made available on CD. Efforts are currently underway to similarly publish volumes 1, 3 and 4 which cover the period from 1667 to 1916. 

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Archival Holdings

The First Parish Archives, containing some six thousand items,  includes an array of materials that document the day to day operations of the Church.  Probably the most significant items are the 4 volumes of official Church records, spanning the period from 1667 to about 1916.  These books include all baptisms, marriages, burials, communions and Oaths of Covenant for the period.  They also include the official records of Parish meetings and transcribed letters and committee reports.   

The Church was the cornerstone of some of the oldest Charitable and Social organizations, such as the Beverly Female Charitable Society, and the earliest records of this organization are part of the archives.  Extensive records of the First Parish Sunday School as well as the Library (which was later transferred to the Town and became today’s Beverly Public Library) are here.  Early records of the choir, music program and the Beverly Singing School are also here.  Booklets documenting allocations to the individual poor of Beverly from the late 18th century into the early 19th century tell a revealing story of conditions in the town at that time.

Because the Church was so closely associated in its early years with the operation of the Town of Beverly, there are many surprising items, such as Tax assessments and collection records, reflecting the primary funding mechanism used by First Parish until well into the 1860s.  There are account books that document how the Church spent its money and deeds of Church pews owned by Parishioners.

The Church engaged in many building projects over the years, including renovations to the main building, construction of the Vestry and the Parish Houses and acquisition and sale of various Parsonages.  The records here are so complete that it is possible to compute with fair accuracy the exact costs of some of these projects today, both in terms of labor and materials.

Finally, there are literally thousands of individual records that chronicle many everyday events and occurrences in the Church.  There is, for example an extensive collection of Sermons and Orders of Service dating back to the late 19th century that is maintained to the current day.  There are records of Church social events including dances, fairs, auctions, and music programs.  

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Archival Policy

The care and maintenance of the Archives is governed by an Archives Policy, drafted by David Jones of the Historical Committee and approved by the Parish Board.  This policy includes guidelines on  what should be placed in the archives (accession), how an archival item should be removed from the archives (de-accession), who should be allowed access to the archives and who should be notified in the event of an emergency that has an impact on the collection.  This policy can be found in the Historical Committee Manual, in possession of the chairman.

As processing of the archives continues, items will be reorganized to make them easier to locate.  An online finding aid has been developed to permit rapid searching of the material and limit the handling of the items.  Our goal is to make this finding aid available online via the Church Web Site.

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Organization

Logical Organization of the Archives (Provenance)

The archive includes items whose provenance correlates to the organization of the Church as it existed at various times through history.  In spite of its lengthy life, the Church’s structure has remained surprisingly stable over the years mostly due to its alignment with the Municipal organization model.  After some analysis, the Historical Committee developed a logical organizing scheme consisting of multiple collections each divided into sub groups and, within subgroups into series.  The scheme is at this point relatively flexible and can be modified if the need arises at least until all archival items have been processed. 

The organizational structure of the archives is as follows:

Worship- items relating to the religious activities of the Church

Religious Education- Items relating to the Sunday School as well as adult education

Diaconate- Items relating to the Diaconate committee

Primary records of parishioners

Financial- Items relating to the finances of the Church

Ministerial- Items relating to the various ministers who served in the church

Parish Administration- Items relating to the day-to-day activities of the Parish

Music- Items relating to music in the church

Historical- Items that are noteworthy from a historical or genealogical perspective in the church

Outreach- Items relating to the Social organizations of the Church

Building- Items relating to the physical infrastructure of the church

Funding- The Historical Committee

The First Parish Historical Committee is the body that governs the policies around the Archival collection.  Since about 2004 almost all of its attention has been focused in this area.  The Historical Committee is represented in the Church Council by its Chair person and presents an annual budget, some of which it spends on the maintenance of the Archives.  Additional funding may be secured by grants from the Mass Historical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities and other organizations.  Donations from members and friends of First Parish Church are always welcome and greatly help in our preservation efforts.

Other Organizations- BAP

A principal funding mechanism for the Church’s archival preservation efforts has been the Beverly Archives Project, collaboration between many religious, public and private institutions in Beverly and the immediate vicinity. BAP has developed common expertise in document preservation and has obtain grants to assist its member organizations in this work.  The First Parish is one of its founding members, and currently provides space for its website http://www.beverlyarchivesproject.org.  Through BAP the Church has benefited from the services and training of a professional archivist, Christine Kobialka from the First Unitarian Church in Salem.

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