• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Moravian Archives, Winston-Salem, NC

since 1753, documenting
our churches, our families, our communities

  • About
    • Our Mission, Our Witness
    • Our History, Governing Commission, and Staff
    • About the Archivist
    • The Archie K. Davis Center
    • Work Study and Internships with Us
  • Our Churches
    • The Moravian Church, Then and Now
    • Southern Province and Salem Congregation
    • Our Local Churches and Fellowships
    • Moravian Archives Sunday
  • Family History
    • Our Memoir Collection
    • Reading Room Computer Resources
    • The Genealogy Bookshelves
  • Research
    • Searching our Collections
    • The Wachovia Moravian
    • Research Studies Sampler
    • Research Policies and Application Form
    • Helpful Links
    • Moravian Studies Collaborative
  • Services
    • Free Services For All Guests
    • Reprographic Services
    • Permissions For Use
    • For Churches and Church Agencies Adding Records
  • Products
    • Book Series: Records of the Moravians in North Carolina
    • Book Series: Records of the Moravians Among the Cherokees
    • Bookstore & More: Items For Sale
    • Exhibits
      • The Languages of Flowers in Moravian Wachovia
      • The Botanizers of Salem, 1785-1835
    • Thursday Talks
  • Supporters
    • Ways to Donate and Support
    • Rev. Dr. C. Daniel Crews Friends Fund – Annual Budget
    • Technology Fund – Computers and Software
    • Book Fund – Collection Maintenance
    • Endowment Fund – Long-Term Reserves
    • Sustainers – Planned Giving
    • Collectors – Gifts in Kind
    • Volunteers – Working Alongside Us
    • Annotations, Our Supporters Newsletter
  • Find Us
    • Contact and Visit Information
    • Site Map

Searching Our Collections

Noted below are the current methods by which members of our community may search our collections. However, there will be new, online methods to search our holdings available within the next year, so please keep checking back!

Books
In the fall of 2015, the Moravian Music Foundation and the Moravian Archives combined our reference collections located in the Reading Room and classified them according to the Library of Congress cataloging system. The Moravian Music Foundation offers us and you a service, GemeinKat Catalog, which will help scholars more easily locate items within our extensive collections. Since the catalog includes the collections of the Moravian communities from the 18th through the 21st centuries, the name GemeinKat is reflective of that purpose (Gemein– from the German word for community or fellowship, and Kat for catalog).

Our thanks to our friends at the Foundation for providing us this service. These items have been cataloged in the OCLC WorldCat bibliographic database. All Archives books will be listed as holdings of the library of the Moravian Music Foundation (as you check boxes of libraries to search at the left of your query). Archives holdings have a small marker within their entry to designate their provenance within our Archives.

GemeinKat is available to the public, on the internet, at www.moravianmusic.on.worldcat.org and is a WorldCat Discovery catalog, developed by OCLC, a nonprofit organization that provides services to thousands of libraries worldwide. The Moravian Music Foundation also partnered with Backstage Library Works to prepare records based on manuscripts from the Archives of the Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, NC and Bethlehem, PA.

The 1942 WPA catalog of our holdings, compiled by Adelaide Fries

Manuscripts
The most complete current online listing of our manuscript holdings dates from a 1942 catalog by Dr. Adelaide Fries done with the assistance of the Work Projects Administration. Although our holdings are listed in a different catalog arrangement today, this gives you an overview of many of our older holdings.

Our current manuscript inventory is described in a series of Word documents on site at our facility. They are accessible either on our Reading Room computers or by scanning through a twenty-notebook printout. The manuscript holdings are cataloged in outline form according to subject matter and provenance. Below are two outlines showing the organization of those materials in two levels of detail: 1) a three-page description of the categories into which items are sorted; and 2) a thirteen-page inventory with subheadings which adds additional descriptive depth to the kinds of materials in each category. These inventories are for church materials largely before 1900, and are not a complete inventory of our personal correspondence collections, or other manuscripts.

The Archives has a rare first edition copy of the Fry-Jefferson map of Virginia (photo from Library of Congress website)

Photographs and Maps
Our image collection spans the history of photography, and their content is varied. A number of our individual prints have been copied by Old Salem Museums and Gardens for their research collections and are searchable through Digital Forsyth. We have many other images awaiting digitization and identification within our materials, however, that are not found in other locations. Our most requested maps for genealogy research have been photographed in sections and are searchable in detail on our Reading Room computers. If a topic area is of visual interest to you, we encourage you to contact us to research our holdings. Inventories of our image and map collections are searchable on our in-house research computers.

For a fee we can provide copies of images or maps for use in publications, displays, websites, etc. Further information can be found here: Image Reproduction Services

Vertical File, Microfilm, Audio Recordings, Ephemera
Most of these holdings have been inventoried, but their catalogs are not digitally accessible at this time. Our vertical file inventory of articles and paper items is card catalog searchable in our Reading Room. Other item inventories are in Excel or Word files searchable with staff assistance on our Reading Room computers.

back to top

Primary Sidebar

Support our Annual Giving – Rev. Dr. C. Daniel Crews Friends Fund

Give to our Technology Fund

Monies will purchase new computers and software allowing the Archives to better access and share its holdings. We have reached our initial goal, but will still accept donations. More info here.




Visiting Us

We are currently closed to visitors until the new Assistant Archivist is hired in the new year. Meanwhile, please feel free to email your research questions, and we will help as we are able.

Parking is in the northwest corner of the lot at the western end of SR 4326 (Rams Drive) off Salem Avenue. The same street serves as entry to the Elbertson Fine Arts Center at Salem College. When we reopen, our hours will be Monday-Friday (excepting holidays), 10:00 a.m. – noon, 1:00-4:00 p.m. by appointment only. We invite you to contact us to plan your visit.

Contact Us

Moravian Archives
457 S. Church Street
Winston-Salem, N.C. 27101

Phone: (336) 722-1742
Email: sparchives@mcsp.org

Follow us on Facebook

Shop our Bookstore

Copyright © 2023 · Executive Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in