A Mid-Year Review

Not the mid-year review that strikes dread into many a supervised employee the world over (or is that just me?)… just a long-overdue update on a few items of note from the past few months.

The good:

In late September I will be returning to the Pennsylvania State Archives, as a Scholar in Residence!

After visiting the Archives several times last year I learned of its Scholars in Residence Program and decided to apply. 

The Scholars in Residence Program supports short-term, full-time research and study in collections maintained by the Pennsylvania State Archives.

The Scholars in Residence Program has a four-fold purpose:

• to promote the interpretation of Pennsylvania history;
• to encourage research that draws upon the Pennsylvania State Archives' collections;
• to promote the dissemination of research findings to both the professional community of scholars and the public; and
• to develop collegial relationships between scholars and Archives' staff.

Proposals that address the State Archives’ interest in public policy, as well as those that focus on social history, the history of people underrepresented in the state’s historical record, including but not limited to minorities and women, are encouraged.

The Pennsylvania State Archives Scholars in Residence Program is made possible by the generous financial support of The Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation (PAHeritage.org) and the Pennsylvania Historical Association (PA-History.org).

I applied for the grant in February. My project is titled:

Building Community and Identity in Pennsylvania’s Carpatho-Rusyn Immigrant Communities

and my application, which gave the background to my research and especially the value of naturalization documents and civil incorporation documents of churches, fraternal lodges, clubs, etc., included the following statement of work:

In May 2022 I visited the Archives to evaluate the items of interest and to gather as many as possible additional naturalization documents for Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants in counties whose courthouses I had not visited or from which no documents were available online. The counties with naturalization documents of interest in the Archives include Bradford, Centre, Crawford, Dauphin, Delaware, Fayette, Greene, and Lehigh counties. The holdings of this many counties’ naturalization documents in one place will save me a substantial amount of time and effort that would otherwise be spent traveling to county courthouses scattered across the state.

I will continue the use of the microfilm reels containing county naturalization records filed in the Prothonotary of the above-mentioned counties, part of Records of County Governments. These will be added to those for which database entry is pending.

In addition, some county microfilms contain deeds and indexes of deeds which I will review in the following counties of significant Carpatho-Rusyn settlement, such as Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Carbon, Clearfield, Jefferson, Northampton, Northumberland, Somerset, Washington, and Westmoreland.

Finally, I hope to find Articles of Incorporation of Carpatho-Rusyn community organizations (e.g., churches, fraternal benefit societies, social clubs) within the Department of State, Department of Corporation Bureau Collection.

In April I was thrilled to find out that I was selected for the program. And I’m happy to say this is now the second grant I’ve received to support my research.

I’ll share more information about this in coming months, including the article(s) I will write as part of the fulfillment of the grant award requirements.

The sad:

Proud and active Carpatho-Rusyn American George Neborak, of Arlington, Virginia, formerly of Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, died on May 14, 2023, at age 94. George was a native of Philadelphia, the youngest son of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants Michael Neborak (from Vŷšnij Myrošiv, Šaryš County) and Susan (Ducar) Neborak (from Krajnje Čorne, Šaryš County). George grew up in Holy Ghost Byzantine/Greek Catholic Church in the West Passyunk neighborhood of South Philly, and sang in Holy Ghost Choir for many years.

George had a great interest in his Carpatho-Rusyn roots and diligently worked to share it with others. He traveled to Slovakia to visit his parents’ birthplaces and relatives many times, and in his later years was involved with the Delaware Valley and National Capital (D.C.) Chapters of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society.

He also served as an informant for studies of the Carpatho-Rusyn and Slovak immigrant communities of his South Philadelphia childhood, information he also shared with me over the past few years I got to know him. I will look forward to including some of his stories and other material in my book.

With condolences to his wife Charlotte, three children, five grandchildren, and their families, may God grant His servant, George, blessed repose and eternal memory – vičnaja pamjat’, blažennyj pokoj, vičnaja jemu pamjat’!

The possibly troubling:

from U.S. Copyright Office / copyright.gov

A few months ago, I made an impromptu visit to a historic Ukrainian Greek Catholic church in the anthracite region, a parish thoroughly of Carpatho-Rusyn origin. I do have a fair amount of historical material from this community, including three anniversary booklets and a few photographs from various fraternal organization almanacs. While in the church basement/hall, I noticed a large number of decent-quality color photocopies of old photos from the parish’s history. I didn’t recall all of them being used in the anniversary booklets, or if they were, they were printed quite small and might be difficult to reproduce. I inquired about coming back with a scanner to capture the images for possible use in my book, and was asked to contact the parish priest to schedule that. When I contacted him by phone, he expressed his great concern with the project I was describing to him. I’m not sure if it was because, as he believed, he had never met me (even though I had met and talked with him just a few years ago) and had "no idea what [my] intentions are," despite my having just spent several minutes summarizing the scope and purpose of my research, describing my background, church affiliation, etc., but he asked that he meet with me in person before considering my request to scan the photocopies of the old photos.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve run into some resistance from the clergy, which I have generally been able to overcome. That’s not the troubling part. The parish priest raised the issue with me of the parish’s intellectual property (history, photographs, etc.), and that it is the parish’s right to control who writes about them, what is written, and what materials, if any, can be used. (He included in this any photographs of the church building itself and of the interior.) I acknowledge that right exists (to a point) and I don’t intend to violate such... although I am skeptical that publishing an exterior photograph of a church building could be contested by the congregation. And certainly, my writing and publishing a history of a community and its parish church that was compiled from varied and disparate sources, some of which would include history published by the parish, should not be able to be blocked.

This photo appears in a fraternal organization
almanac. If the fraternal gave me
permission to reprint it, but the parish of the
church pictured (not the one this post is about!)
also has the photo, can they overrule
the fraternal and tell me I cannot?

So to extend this across the scope of my book: Will I need to seek permission from every church from which I want to reproduce a photo(s) from an anniversary book? Most likely, yes, and a serious academic publisher (which would be my first choice to publish my work) would probably insist on seeking written permission from each entity deemed to own the rights to the material. This is the kind of detail I hadn't really considered before now, but could complicate things quite a bit. This is pretty much "commercial publishing 101" but I haven't gone through the process myself, so I still have a lot to learn.

What about quoting from such anniversary booklets? Certainly quotes, not wholesale copying outright, fall within the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. copyright law.

What about publishing church interior photographs that I’ve taken? Does the church have the right to decide if those can be published? Hmmm…

I absolutely intend to seek permission to reprint materials such as church anniversary booklet photos, for efficiency’s sake from the top down, hoping that the bishops of the various churches may grant blanket permission to do this, sparing me possibly several hundred individual requests. Barring that, I will seek permission from the individual parishes. The time and effort this may take is daunting. I feel like I’ll need to hire an assistant just to manage this process. Maybe I’ll find that this approach will be smoother than I imagine, but I do worry that the question of perspective / bias and the (un)acceptability of the theme to some of the subjects of the work will rear its head and put some insurmountable roadblocks in the way.