ROOTS & BRANCHES

On a day last week that when the weather was predicted to included a snowy mist worthy of a mythological landscape—a legendary archivist took a bow into retirement.

Jonathan R. Stayer, head of reference at the Pennsylvania State Archives, is that legend.

Stayer got to the State Archives in the first half of the 1980s, just as I was starting my own genealogical journey.

Over the course of time, he helped me with many a research problem—the state’s land records were his specialty, but his encyclopedic knowledge extended the length and breadth of the documents at the archives—and we met at many a family history conference, too.

We both went on the board of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania in 1999 when that Philadelphia-centric institution had but one other board member who lived beyond the suburban Philly Blue Route.

On our first ride to Philadelphia together, he had a substantial effect on my life when he noted that the society was looking for an executive director—and “you’d be great for that job.”

At the time, I was 39 and wearying of working evenings on a newspaper.

I got the job and for four years, Stayer was an unstinting supporter of my vision for trying to make the society a truly statewide organization. He even spearheaded loading a huge U-Haul truck when we endeavored to save the society some money by doing the “box move” of the library from one site to another!

When I moved on to freelance work, Stayer recommended me for the State Historic Records Advisory Board—and probably many other gigs I never found out about!—a position I still occupy.

At Stayer’s retirement luncheon, he was the subject of tributes from many current and former colleagues, all of which focused on what a truly nice guy he is.

When it was Stayer’s turn to talk, he listed his retirement projects, which include a lot of archival things at home and his church. Plus he’s a new grandparent and it’s obvious that baby will be occupying a lot of this time.

It was noted that during his 35 years on staff, he’d trained two generations of archivists, but what was most interesting to me was finding out his role in one of Pennsylvania’s seminal collections of military records.

On the digital archives website is a collection of scanned index cards of Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary War soldiers. For as many times as I’ve used this resource, I guess I never really thought about how all those cards had to be typed—I guess I figured it was done in some misty, long ago, mythological time.

Well, I learned during the luncheon that Stayer had been the anchor man for that two-decade-long project when he was an intern in 1982.

Proving that even in the beginning of his career, he was a just like a legend emerging from the mist.