The Pennsylvania Society is currently undertaking a major digitization project under the guidance of Pennsylvania Registrar Jefferson Monroe Moak II. In order to make the Society’s paper archives more accessible to the Membership, as well as War of 1812 researchers, professional geneaologists, general family tree researchers, and potential Society members, Registrar Moak has been going through all of the Society’s surviving membership rolls and application files and capturing all of the relevant historical information (names, service records for 1812 Veterans, service records for ancestors, and birth and death dates) and entering this all into digital databases that can be indexed and searched. This project has been underway for several years now and approximately 70% of the Society’s records have been digitized and entered into the database so far. The overall goal is to make these records, all of this valuable information, more easily accessible.
Concurrently, the General Society is undertaking a very similar project (ours started first!) with all of its application records while have now been moved from Ohio to the New England Historical Society in Boston. This multi-year project is just getting underway. Once the NEHS has completed their digitizing of all the files and records, we will do a major comparison to make sure that Pennsylvania has a copy of all the relevant Pennsylvania information. Mr. Moak is also serving as Historian for the General Society and serves on the Committee overseeing this project.
For more specific information on Pennsylvania’s archival records, please contact Mr. Moak at [email protected]