Resources & Links

If you wish to view records we have in our archives, please contact the church office at 215-925-7788 to make an appointment.

Interested in genealogy research? In addition to our records, these two organizations have extensive holdings:
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Genealogy Society of Pennsylvania

Seeking information about an ancestor who was a Methodist preacher? General Commission on Archives and History has a variety of resources online.

Interested in a walking tour? This walking tour of Methodist history in Old City, Philadelphia was created by students of Dr. Benjamin Hartley.

Coming on a Tour Bus? Click here for parking instructions.

Interested in learning about the records held by historic churches in Philadelphia? A new archival project spearheaded by Christ Church Preservation Trust will provide new portals into the relationship between religion and politics in the 18th and early 19th centuries, perhaps offering more insight into colonial America than any other published body of work.

In January 2018, the Trust received a Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). (The CLIR Digitizing Hidden Collections program grant is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.) This grant allowed for the digitization of over 41,000 records from Philadelphia’s oldest congregations, connecting the archives of Christ Church, St. George’s Methodist Church, Gloria Dei, Mikveh Israel, African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, Episcopal Dioceses Archives, Presbyterian Historical Society, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and American Baptist Historical Society.

Entitled “Digitizing the Records of Philadelphia’s Historic Congregations: Providing Documentation for the Political, Social and Cultural Developments in Philadelphia,” the documents range in date from 1708-1870.

Much of the congregational information has remained “hidden,” inaccessible due to technological and funding limitations, but these important records function as transcripts of a time before census takers and city directories. Church membership lists and burial, marriage and baptismal records provide information on individuals living in the nation’s first capital. Pew registers provide a wealth of information about status within the community and social ranking within churches. Minutes and correspondence highlight the diversity of religious thought and religious toleration and illustrate how freely individuals moved between historic congregations.

These records illuminate scholarship topics including Philadelphia’s activities during the Civil War, the role of the church in enslaved and free African communities from the mid-1700’s through the Civil War, and the rise of new religious denominations, such as the Episcopal Church and the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas.

“Digitizing the Records of Philadelphia’s Historic Congregations” builds upon a Christ Church pilot project launched in 2014 by incorporating technology that allows the tagging of different data within one document, an act that enhances the searchability of records. Unlike other major genealogical sites, this project has made research information free and easily accessible to an international audience.

Click here to visit the Philadelphia Congregations Records website, where you can view all of the digitized records from the participating churches.

Click here to learn more about the Christ Church Preservation Trust and its digitization projects.

Search the HSG Collection

St. George's is proud to offer the African American Methodists in the Antebellum and Reconstruction Periods: A Timetable, 1760-1876, compiled by J. Gordon Melton, the Distinguished Professor of American Religious History at Baylor University, Waco, TX.

A list of Methodist Episcopal Churches in the City of Philadelphia in 1877 can assist you in identifying institutions for which we may have records. Source: Monthly Messenger, January 1877. See a map of those churches here. The map was prepared by Alex Fegely, one of our Temple University Cultural Fieldwork Initiative interns.

Catalog of our Library holdings. Please make an appointment to use the library.

Finding Aid in the Philadelphia Area Archives

In 2012-2014, part of the HSG Collection was catalogued as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

You can view the summaries that are included in that project on the Philadelphia Area Archives website. The links below should take you to the individual records, although over time the Philadelphia Area Archives website may change their links. You can also search that website for everything related to the HSG Collection by selecting the repository called: Historical Society of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church.

ST. GEORGE'S & SOCIETY RECORDS

St. George's United Methodist Church records, 1763-2014
Historical Society of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church subject files, 1770-2014 [bulk 1970-2014]
Historical Society of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church manuscripts collection, circa 1770-2000
Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church records, 1773-2012
Historical Society of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church collection of Methodist organizations records, circa 1820-1975
Laymen's Association of the Philadelphia Annual Conference records, 1889-1973
Philadelphia Branch of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church records, 1870-1940
Preachers' Aid Society of the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church records, 1869-1935
Preachers' Meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Philadelphia minutes, 1838-1942
Woman's Society of Christian Service of the Philadelphia Conference of the Methodist Church records, 1883-1973 [bulk 1940-1973]

CLOSED CHURCHES

Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church closed churches records, 1801-2012

Resources & Links

Search the HSG Collection

Finding Aid in the Philadelphia Area Archives

Historic St. George’s United Methodist Church

Historic St. George’s
United Methodist Church