Religion

The history of religion in Cleveland and the Western Reserve is documented through almost 700 manuscript and photograph collections from churches and religious organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These collections feature material from Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, United Church of Christ, African Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, and other Protestant churches, including the papers of pastors and church musicians, and an extensive Jewish History Archives, which includes the records of synagogues and community organizations and the papers of rabbis, cantors, and Jewish families.

The library also boasts the largest, most comprehensive collection of Shaker materials in the world, consisting of books, pamphlets, broadsides, spirit drawings, and manuscripts.

Library collections also document the early history of the Mormon Church and the anti-Mormon movement in the early Western Reserve, and include a first edition of the Book of Mormon and the second edition published in Kirtland, Ohio.

Other printed material includes early examples of church hymnals that were used in Western Reserve churches.