The Parallels Between Then and Now

Mike Krasulski in the archives of The Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.

For those who may feel discouraged when thinking about the good old days, when Episcopal Churches were filled to capacity and seemed to play a more central role in the lives of families and communities, Michael Krasulski offers a helpful suggestion:

Go through historical materials in the Archives of the Diocese of Pennsylvania and see what people actually had to say about the “good old days” when they were happening.

“Doing church archives work, I have been astounded by the parallels between then and now,” says Krasulski, who volunteers his time tending the diocese’s archives, which are housed in the basement of the United Lutheran Seminary’s Brossman Center in Philadelphia.

Krasulski, whose fulltime job is associate professor/access services librarian and chair of the Library and Educational Resources Department at the Community College of Philadelphia, first became interested in diocesan history after he started attending the Church of St. Luke and The Epiphany in 2009.

He was especially interested in the period between the First World War and the 1970s, when The Episcopal Church across the United States was generally booming, but declining in Center City Philadelphia.

Krasulski created a historical blog called Philadelphia Studies dedicated to sharing information about Episcopal churches in the City of Philadelphia from their parish archives. He first noticed the link between past and present after he received permission from the Rev. Canon W. Gordon Reid at St. Clement’s Church to digitize and post scans of material from the parish’s archives on the blog.

While digitizing issues of the St. Clement’s Church magazine from the 1800s, Krasulski came across an article from the 1880s about a choir boy baseball game between St. Clements and St. Timothy's Roxborough.

 “And the article mentions that children were so overscheduled that they couldn't muster enough for a full team,” he says.

“And I always chuckle about that because we talk about children being overscheduled now, and then here it is in the 1880s, a priest writing about children being overscheduled and not being able to participate in choir boy baseball.”

Another time, Krasulski was visiting Grace-Epiphany Church, scanning issues of the parish’s former Grace Church News from the 1920s, and overheard a group of church members in an adjacent room bemoaning how people didn’t volunteer for the church’s Strawberry Festival anymore.

 “Well, there I was looking at an issue from 1924 complaining that no one signs up for the Strawberry Festival anymore,” he recalls. “And I had an idea. I don't know how successful I've been in this, but I try to find or highlight material to give clergy hope. Because if we only look at the church from 1950 to 1960, which many people remember—I don't, but many people do—well, that's a hard bar to meet.

 ”However, if we can illustrate to clergy that, yes, people weren't signing up for things in the good old days, children were too busy to do church stuff in the good old days … I would love for this material to be used as a way to build people up and as a way of reassurance, rather than as a way to say, ‘Oh, well, you're not doing it like they used to.’”

 ‘A Labor of Love’

Krasulski jokes that he started the Philadelphia Studies blog “just for my Center City church geek friends.”

“I didn't realize how popular this stuff was going to become,” Krasulski says. “Then, as I started working my way through Philadelphia's parish archives, people were very gracious to let me look at their collections.”

 He eventually contacted the diocese’s then-archivist, Peter Moak, “who was very gracious with his time,” Krasulski says. “And I became the archive's heaviest user.”

 When Moak stepped down as archivist, the diocese’s collection was entrusted to Krasulski. “I volunteer my time at my leisure and help as best as I can,” he says. “This is purely a labor of love.”

 Krasulski has also sought advice on how to do the job better from James Duffin, an archivist at the University of Pennsylvania who is also a member of the Church of St. Luke and The Epiphany, and from other Episcopal dioceses, including Maine, Maryland, and New York.

What Is and Isn’t in the Diocesan Archives?

 “The Archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania can be thought of as sort of three buckets,” Krasulski says. “The first bucket would be materials related to the offices of the diocese, the bishop, and the administration of the diocese. So that could range anything from bishops’ personal or public correspondence, their papers, minutes of the standing committee of the various departments or offices within the diocese. It will include materials on the ordination of clergy, and in some instances, the discipline of clergy.”

 In addition, the “first bucket” includes some 2,000 or so photographs. “We do get a lot of requests for photographs of different clergies. Sometimes we have them, sometimes we don't,” he says.

 Parish materials make up the second bucket.

 “This can sometimes create some confusion. Not to get too boring here, but in the canons and constitution of both the Diocese and The Episcopal Church, the record responsibility really does fall with parishes,” Krasulski says. “So what happens if a parish should close? Those materials then become property of the diocese. And the diocese becomes the custodian of their sacramental registers, their service books, vestry minutes, and other materials that the church happened to save over time.”

He adds that the diocesan archives do include some material from parishes that remain open, “but those tend to be if a bishop went for a visitation and someone gave the bishop, for example, an anniversary booklet or something, or a leaflet from the service, or someone donates an old issue of a parish magazine to the diocese, then it would end up here.”

Krasulski calls the third bucket “a hodgepodge of materials,” from papers of diocesan staff to papers of diocese and ancillary organizations like Episcopal Church Women (ECW), the Church Club of Philadelphia, and some of the mission societies and organizations. It also includes old prayer books or old devotional materials, lantern slides, and glass plate negatives.

“Unfortunately, we do not have duplicate copies of parish sacramental registers,” he says. “However, one collection that we do have that is a lifeline is what's called the Diocesan Confirmation Register, which stretches from 1911 to 2000. And that often does contain people's baptismal information. So if someone was confirmed in the diocese and the baptismal register is lost, that can serve as a replacement.”

Perhaps the oddest single item in the archives is the death mask of Bishop Francis Marion Taitt, who served as bishop from 1931 to his death in 1943.

“We don't know why it was made, who commissioned it. Was it ever displayed? But it's here,” Krasulski says.

There are items that shed light of important historical controversies in the church, including correspondence from Bishop William Bacon Stevens regarding the ritualist debates of the 1870s, which included disputes over such practices as the use of processional crosses, altar lights, eucharistic vestments, incense, genuflection before the Blessed Sacrament, and elevation of the consecrated elements at the eucharist.

The diocesan archives also include papers from Bishop Robert L. DeWitt, who championed the cause of civil rights and social justice from 1964-1973, and his successor, Bishop Lyman L. Ogilby, who was bishop when the first women were ordained as Episcopal priests at Church of the Advocate in 1974.

As the first Bishop of Pennsylvania and the first and fourth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, William White was obviously a pivotal figure in the history of not only the Diocese of Pennsylvania, but The Episcopal Church. However, you won’t find much of White’s materials in the diocesan archive.

 “At one point in time, the diocesan archives and the Church Historical Society, which is now the Archives of the Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas, were one in the same organization. They were in the basement of the Philadelphia Divinity School (PDS) in West Philadelphia,” Krasulski says.

 “When PDS closed, the collection was separated and all of the Church Historical Society material went to Texas. The materials from the Diocese of Pennsylvania that were deemed of national importance went to Texas. So a lot of the William White stuff went to the Historical Society in Texas. We do not have an inventory of what went to Texas, so I can only speculate.”

 Working with Parishes

 Because Episcopal churches are responsible for maintaining their own parish records, Krasulski has worked with numerous individuals and groups at parishes throughout the diocese to help them create or better organize their own parish archives.

 “Parish work, of course, is always very, very near and dear to me,” he says. “The diocesan archives is fun. But when I can get out into the parishes, that's when I have a real good time. What's fun for me about this collection and working with all sorts of church archive material is getting people interested in their own parish story.

 “The number one takeaway, in my perspective, is to have a successful church archive, you need to have one or a couple of people who are passionate and willing to do work. Then when you get somebody who is passionate and interested, that enthusiasm builds. And then you get to see how to engage your parish. That's going to look different in every parish in the diocese.” 

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill

For St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill, the spark to create an accessible parish archive was the desire to write a parish history book for the church’s 2006 sesquicentennial celebration, recalls Clark Groome, who chaired the sesquicentennial.

 “So we started looking for stuff, and we started looking for somebody to write it,” Groome recalls. “And where we looked for stuff was in every nook and cranny, and there was more stuff all over the place. So we started to sort it and we put it into what I thought was logical piles—clergy, building, music, outreach, whatever.”

 Once sorted and organized, the parish archives had five different homes from 1998 until 2022. “Now it's in its final home, and it now is completely protected with fireproof files,” Groome says.

 Krasulski has provided guidance during the latter stages of the decades-long process. His most invaluable assistance, Groome says, was telling him “what I could throw out. And I'll love him forever for that because we threw out a lot of stuff.”

 And the archives did indeed help make the publication of a book in 2006 to mark the 150th anniversary of the church a reality: A Parish Journey, 1856-2006, by David R.Contosta.

 Groome offers advice for other parishes thinking about organizing their own archives.

 “Find some reason to attack your archives because it will add to the 100th anniversary, the installation of the 10th Rector—whatever it is, something that will goose people to think, ‘Ooh, let's tie this in,’” Groome recommends. “I'm not an archivist. I like history, but the history I like probably doesn't have anything to do with 1856 [the year the church became a member of the diocese].

 “So get people interested in something going on at their church about which they might have some background that they could get into because I can guarantee them, once they get into the background, they're going to be hooked.”

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Germantown

For St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Germantown, the impetus for creating a parish archive started with a search for information about a portrait of Bishop White that hung in a room at the church. The portrait piqued the curiosity of vestry member Phoebe Griswold—an art history major, founding member of Episcopal Church and Visual Arts (ECVA), whose mission is to encourage artists and organizations to engage the visual arts in the spiritual life of the church, and wife of former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, who died in March 2023.

Who painted the portrait and how it came to the church remained a mystery, so Griswold and fellow member Bettie Kleckley started a committee to tackle the parish’s archive to try to find answers.  

“We found that there was a lot of material down in the basement,” Kleckley says. They also found there was a lot of mold among other unpleasant things in the basement. So wearing masks, gloves and other protective clothing, church volunteers and Krasulski started sorting through the materials, finding the church’s original deed and other information.

 Some of the material was brought up to a room in the old rectory that the Rev. David J. Morris gave the committee to sort and house the archive, and some was taken to the diocesan archives.

 Kleckley seconded Groome’s assessment that Krasulski was especially helpful in offering guidance on what to throw out.

 “We got rid of a lot of stuff that we didn't really have to keep,” Kleckley says. “Michael helped us sort through it and taught us the difference between an archivist, a librarian, and a hoarder.” 

The portrait of Bishop White was identified as having been painted by renowned artist Henry Inman, who—as the Washington Post wrote in a 1987 article about a retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work at the National Portrait Gallery—“portrayed President Van Buren, Chief Justice John Marshall, Indian chiefs and poets, a small army of the clergy and stage stars from abroad.” 

St. Luke’s still is not certain exactly how the Inman portrait of Bishop White wound up at the church. There are theories. But Griswold says the journey to try to find out has been enormously rewarding in its own right. 

“I'll tell you, this is a wonderful committee. And it's a treasure hunt. We get so excited. Every museum opened their doors to us and took us into their back room and looked at the painting. And it ended up at Winterthur to be restored. How about that? 

Griswold (R) works with Krasulski.

“One of the great gifts to me from doing this work is that the people that I work with become my closest and dearest relationships. [That] is so correctly church in the best way. And I've always found that, when you get right down and work with somebody, church means that much more to you. I love that. That's why I'm a church person.”