One of the world’s most comprehensive collections of Anabaptist and Mennonite historical documents
On June 13, 1906, the Alumni Association of Goshen College passed a resolution to establish a Mennonite Historical Library. The collection grew slowly, occupying only three shelves in the college library by 1927. About this time Harold S. Bender and Ernst Correll revived the Mennonite Historical Society and through it began a campaign to collect Anabaptist-Mennonite historical materials. The acquisition of the John F. Funk library in 1930 and the major part of the historical collection from the Mennonite Publishing House at Scottdale, Pennsylvania, in the 1940s greatly enriched the collection. The latter, maintained as a memorial to the Mennonite historian John Horsch, is particularly rich in Reformation materials.
The library includes bibliographies, texts and images on topics related to the Radical Reformation, the Anabaptists, Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish and various related groups.