New Collection

New Old Stuff in the Archives: 2024 Edition

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As we celebrate the start of a new year, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections looks back at some of the interesting accessions of historical documents that the Archives received in 2024 and the new or updated collections we processed and opened to researchers.

New Accessions

For almost seventy years, the story of missionaries’ attempts to bring Christianity to the Waorani people of the Amazon (called the Aucas by their enemies) has been well known to American evangelicals. This year we received the files of Dr. Kathryn Long, who wrote God in the Rainforest (2017), which tells the story from the killing of the five missionaries who first made the attempt to reach the Waorani in 1956 through the development of an Indigenous Christian community among the Waorani in later years. She generously gave her voluminous research files and relevant books to the Archives, including material from her own trips to Ecuador and documents about her work on the staff of Campus Crusade in South America in the 1980s.

Boat used for Unevangelized Fields Mission (later CrossWorld) for river ministry in Brazil.
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‘Luis Palau Responde’

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Photograph of Palau (left) with his six sisters, ca. 1950. From Photo File: Palau, Luis.

When evangelist Luis Palau died in 2021 at the age of 86, he concluded more than sixty years of ministry and presenting the Christian Good News to over one billion people. Growing up in a small Argentinian town outside of Buenos Aires, Palau’s parents – his father died when Palau was ten – were part of a small congregation. Converted as a twelve-year old in 1946, Palau began street-corner preaching as a teenager, and began hosting his own Christian radio program in 1953. Mentored by Pastor Ray Steadman who persuaded Palau to come to the United States in 1960, he studied at Multnomah School of the Bible, where he also met his wife Pat. Joining Overseas Crusades (OC) in 1961, Palau went on to establish OC’s Latin American-focused ministry based in Mexico City. In 1978, after being the president of OC for his two final years in the organization, he established Luis Palau Evangelistic Ministries (later Luis Palau Association), including a team of dedicated colleagues who had been part of the Luis Palau Team in OC. Along the way, he served as an intern for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and as a Spanish translator for Graham; the BGEA was instrumental in opening doors for LPA as the organization was being launched. Palau and Graham continued their friendship, with Graham occasionally appearing at Palau’s large events.

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Looking Back on A Year of New Old Stuff

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Song sheet (ca. 1928) for evangelist Betty Weakland, one of the most well-known of the so-called “girl evangelists,” popular in the first decades of the 20th century. Donated by long-time friend of the Archives, Robert Dresser. Accession 2022-053.

“Collection” and “Accession” are words used all the time in the archival profession. In Wheaton Archives & Specials Collections, an accession is material received from a single donor, usually an individual or an organization. It might be a single folder or hundred of boxes, with only a general inventory to use as a finding aid.  A collection is a set of materials (perhaps including paper-based records, photographs, audio or video recordings, etc.) that has been fully arranged and described. Most of our collections have been formed from several accessions. Here in the Archives & Special Collections, both collections and accessions are open for research (unless there have been donor-requested restrictions) but the lack of a complete finding aid and access points can make accessions difficult to locate or use for research.

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Ring in the New, Accession the Old: 2021 Edition

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As circulation and movement slowly returned, life approached closer to normal in Wheaton Archives & Special Collections, as elsewhere, in 2021.

The first accession of 2021: 21-01 the papers of David Howard, described below.

Most of the staff worked from the office for almost the entire year and with proper precautions researchers could once more be seen reading in the Reading Room. Normalcy (to borrow President Harding’s term from just over a century ago) could be seen in other areas too. In 2020, the Archives acquired 16 accessions, totaling a little more than 9 cubic feet. In 2021 there were 45 accessions, totaling 119 cubic feet. 

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The Language of Flowers: Clippings from Lives of Shared Ministry

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Intricately detailed front cover of Louise Pierson’s Photo Album in Collection 720: Papers of Louise H. Pierson.

Across the wide distances of global missions, a key relationship for many missionaries remains that of their connection to their homeland, supporting churches, and missionary societies. Even as missionaries forge new ties on the mission field they also reach back to the old – to share successes and failures, the wonders and terrors of new lands, and key to their work, elicit financial and spiritual support for their mission. Many materials in the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives document the important ties between the mission field and the homeland, from prayer letters, to missionary cards, to photographs and films.

This month we highlight the dynamic interplay between missionaries and supporters at home by featuring a new collection added to the Archives this spring, Collection 720: The Papers of Louise H. Pierson, composed of a single scrapbook with flower pressings, pictures, newsletters, and other memorabilia from the world and work of Louise Pierson and other women missionaries in South and East Asia during the late nineteenth century.

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Ring in the New, Accession the Old: 2020 Edition

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In grim 2020, the staff of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives had much to be thankful for in our miniscule corner of the world. Our staff remained healthy and productive. Although on-site access to the collections for researchers was either completely or mostly restricted for the year after March, we were not only able to acquire, but to make a significant amount of material available online. It was indeed the best of times, the worst of times.

Map of the 1939 World’s Fair from the new material added to Collection 278 The papers of Elisabeth Elliot in 2020. Written on the back, “Pop took me in Sept. [1940]”

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Introducing the Records of International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES)

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The summer months are a favorite season at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives, a noticeable shift from the marathon of the academic year to the sprint of summer research visits. This year, the manuscripts reading room is eerily dark and quiet, while dissertations, articles, monographs, documentaries, and other research projects wait on pause during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Processed Box

Providing access to collections, however, is only one of many archival tasks. Long before researchers can scroll through finding aids, dig through boxes, or submit duplication requests, collections must be processed—a meticulous procedure of arranging, describing, and preserving historical documents. Depending on staff resources and the size and physical condition of the materials, some processing jobs can require years of effort.

This silent summer in the manuscripts reading room provided one unanticipated benefit for archivists—uninterrupted time for processing—and allowed us to put the final processing touches on a significant new collection.

This August, the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives is pleased to announce the opening of Collection 640: Records of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) for research.

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Evangelical Protestantism as a Global Tradition in the 20th Century: The J. Edwin Orr Papers

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In 1931, a bakery clerk began to hold evangelistic meetings in the streets of his home town of Belfast, Ireland. The next year he set off on a lifelong journey that would take him around the world to stadiums and tiny churches and academic lecture halls. It was a ministry and vocation which included rigorous historical scholarship into deep spiritual mysteries and enthusiastic preaching to crowds of seekers.

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 Orr speaking to a group of university students in India, 1956.

Collection 355: Papers of J. Edwin Orr, not only tell Orr’s life story, but also documents Protestant evangelicalism around the world in every continent except Antarctica. This June, the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives is pleased to announce that this greatly expanded collection can now be used by Christian workers, scholars, and the general public.

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