Henry J. Young Award - Jonathan R. Stayer, July 2024
Jonathan R. Stayer was born in Ephrata, Lancaster County Pennsylvania, the son of the late George E. Stayer and Jane Frey Stayer who then lived in Denver, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His father’s side is mostly Church of the Brethren with some Mennonite and Amish ancestry. The Stayer family was originally in Loudoun County, Virginia and then migrated to Bedford County, Pennsylvania in 1813 and lived there until about 1900. Several generations in the early 1900s moved between Queen Anne’s County, Maryland, Laverne, California and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Jonathan’s father moved back to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Surnames include Stayer, Fyock, Royer, Hertzler, Pennepacker, Lehman, Wise, and Berkey. Some of his ancestors were associated with the Ephrata Cloister.
Jonathan’s mother’s family all came to Pennsylvania before the American Revolution and she never lived more than 50 miles from where her ancestors settled in Lancaster, Lebanon, and Berks County, being of Mennonite, Lutheran and United Brethren, Methodist, Church of the Brethren and Moravian faiths. Jonathan’s mother’s surnames include Frey, Gundrum, Waltz, Fittery, Rider, Boyce, Lehn, and Arndt.
Jonathan graduated from Central York High School in 1978 and graduated from Messiah College in 1982 as a history major. Over the summers of 1979, 1980, and 1981, while in college, he worked in the library of the Historical Society of York County as a work-study student. He was hired part time as Assistant Librarian in 1982 while Landon Reisinger was Librarian. In 1984 he was hired for a temporary job as a field survey archivist to do a county records survey for York, Adams, Lancaster and Fulton Counties. He was hired full time with the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg in 1985 and worked there until 2019 as a reference archivist and in 1990 was promoted as a supervisor of the Reference Section. In 1988 he obtained a Master’s Degree in American Studies from Penn State Harrisburg.
Jonathan’s research and historical interests include family history trying to find all of his immigrant ancestors, Camp Security, and researching Pennsylvania’s Civil War Conscientious Objectors. He has given numerous presentations on these topics and on the holdings of the Pennsylvania State Archives.
His master’s thesis was a study of the Hessians of Lewis Miller and he contributed to a book on the same subject by the Johannes Schwalm Historical Association. He has been the compiler and wrote the introductions to the SCPGS’ 1862 Draft enrollment Lists of York County. He contributed to the Pennsylvania Archives, 2003 book entitled Documenting Pennsylvania’s Past, written to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the State Archives and has written numerous other historical and genealogical articles over the years. A recent major article was about the naming of the Brethren in Christ
denomination which appeared in Brethren in Christ History and Life.
Jonathan has been on the SCPGS board since 2014 and had served several years previously in the 1980s. He has served as Recording Secretary, Vice President and President. He also served on the Board of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania from 1997 to 2004. He currently serves on the boards of the York County History Center and Friends of Camp Security. He also serves as a volunteer at the Pennsylvania State Archives and has assisted with deaccessioning library and archives materials that outside of the current collecting policy of the York County History Center.
Jonathan has been married to his wife Sherry Ferree since 1982 and they are the parents of three daughters: Hannah, Lydia and Maria. They currently have two grandchildren. They are members and active with Grace Baptist Church of York.