Our mission is to preserve the history of the Pennsylvania Reserve Volunteer Corps by collectively cataloging its historic record both digitally and by hardcopy. Within a digital format, we have the ability to share this online hub with members of the general public in both raw and interpretive formats. With this, our goal is to create a Historical Society version 2.0 that publishes all of its content and holdings online, readily accessible to the public at the touch of a button. Our goal is to preserve history for future generations of Americans, and also provide support to historians, authors, teachers, descendants, and individuals with a general interest in our nation’s history.
What We Do
Cultural Archaeological Research
Physical Research Studies: The physical act of conducting this research incurs costs to our organization by volunteers who must physically travel to and from research facilities for the purpose of acquiring useful information for our visitors.
Remote Research Studies: Incurs cost to our organization by way of online subscriptions monthly, quarterly or yearly. This allows our volunteers to conduct research remotely from their base of operation, in order to provide our audience with accurate and detailed research information.
Content Building: With our research, we attempt to piece together not just the military record of this organization, but we try to paint a clear and accurate review of the cultural record of the time.
Preservation of Historic Memory as it relates to the Pennsylvania Reserves: Artifacts, such as original (copy or reproduction) letters, documents and/or photographs, offer us a first hand look into the lives of these soldiers. These important records are carefully documented and reproduced so its contents will be preserved for future generations on our online hub of research materials.
Monuments, Memorials and Gravesites: Occasionally, we host cemetery preservation workshops where we partner with other organizations to help with gravesite maintenance, cleaning and in some cases, repairs. Sometimes we come across soldiers buried with no headstone, which will require us to file paperwork with Veterans Affairs to have one provided. This of course is provided by the Federal Government (upon approval) free of charge however, the cost to have the stone placed is on the requesting party.
Providing Research and Content outside the scope of the P.R.V.C.: Occasionally during our research missions, we uncover interesting, often unpublished resources pertaining to Civil War Units outside the scope of our focus. As historians, it is our duty and responsibility to shed light on these findings so that the general public might be able to learn new things about the historic record of these soldiers and the time period in which they lived. With that, we will do all in our power to publish these materials as we discover them.
Rare/Hard-To-Find Books/Manuscripts Publishing: Although not yet confirmed, it has been discussed by our Board of Directors, an interest in privately publishing rare and/or hard-to-find manuscripts, so that other historians and interested parties can have these resources at their fingertips. More information on this will follow in the coming fiscal year.
Descendant’s Association: It is always fascinating for us to meet descendants of these soldiers. Because of this, we have created an online community, a Descendant’s Association, where the families of fellow soldiers can come together to share stories and information. At present, the Association is free and open to descendants to join.
