Portrait photograph of Robert M. O'Reilly, circa 1870

A lengthy and active military career

I recently finished processing the Robert M. O'Reilly papers (MC 34) which document a good portion of O'Reilly's career as a surgeon for the U.S. Army. O'Reilly's appointment as surgeon general of the army, a position he held from 1902 until  his retirement in 1909, was the last in a

Continue reading

Digitizing the Halvey Photograph Collection, Step One

As a volunteer at PAHRC, I’ve been most excited about beginning the process of reformatting the Robert and Teresa Halvey Photograph Collection. Currently in the inventory cataloging stages, the ultimate goal is to digitize the entire collection and make the images available online. For over sixty years, Robert Halvey served

Continue reading

Black Catholic periodicals

Thanks to our volunteer Andy Staszkiw for his help with this post. PAHRC’s significant collection of periodicals includes newspapers and journals related to black Catholics. Among these are the earliest newspapers published by and for the black Catholic community. These newspapers also covered issues relating to the African American community

Continue reading

James Buchanan materials at the Archdiocesan Archives?

Some of the materials that the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center has in its collection has very little, or perhaps nothing, to do with diocesan history, or more broadly, the history of Catholicism in the U.S. PAHRC's collection not only includes the archives of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, but also the

Continue reading