The Pennsylvania Room has a specialized collection of more than 3,000 volumes on state, local, and family history, as well as original Centre County records, newspapers, patron-provided manuscript genealogies, vital record indexes, and database and paper indexes to Centre County marriages and newspaper obituaries. Unique to this library is the massive Spangler Collection of data on families of central Pennsylvania, and the files of local genealogist J. Marvin Lee. The Pennsylvania Room is located in the historic 1814 Miles-Humes home, which also houses a historical museum featuring documents, photographs, family memorabilia, and other items of interest to family and local historians.
Items on the shelves of the Pa. Room are cataloged in the main database of the Centre County Library (searchable from the homepage of this website).
Some fees apply to research done by the staff: contact paroom@centrecountylibrary.org [4] to inquire about services and costs. Patrons on-site pay only for any photocopies that they make. Laptops and scanning devices are permitted; WiFi is available in the building.
This massive collection of data on central Pennsylvania families was compiled over a period of many years by Adella Fink Spangler (1871-1964). It was largely assembled from primary documents, some of which no longer exist. The collection consists of 176 typed notebooks, 20 scrapbooks, and 116 composition books of research notes on specific families. The typed notebooks and scrapbooks are fully indexed on about 250,000 cards, with many cards containing multiple names. The 116 manuscript composition books contain Mrs. Spangler's compilations of various Centre County families based on on data from early tax records, Bible records, estate files, newspaper articles, vital records, etc. There is a surname index to the composition books and most individual volumes also have a brief index. Among the contents of the fully indexed notebooks and scrapbooks are:
A good adjunct to the Spangler Collection for the early to mid-twentieth century, this grouping contains approximately 20 notebooks compiled by a longtime Centre County genealogist/historian. Mr. Lee's work, which includes family group sheets with some documentation, is primarily from the 1940s to the 1970s.
The Pennsylvania Room collection is conveniently organized in county groupings, so that all information for each county is located together: histories, cemetery and church inforomatoin, etc.
700 publications and growing, as researchers provide a copy of their published work for the Pa. Room collection. The family histories are listed in the main Centre County Library, searchable from the homepage of this website.
Links:
[1] http://centrecountylibrary.org/library/pennsylvania-room
[2] http://centrecountylibrary.org/library/genealogy-links
[3] http://centrecountylibrary.org/library/historical-museum
[4] mailto:paroom@centrecountylibrary.org
