The Council maintains this page for members whose work materially shaped the archive, field methods, or preservation standards. Entries are limited to service and documented institutional contribution.
1846–1919 • Founding secretary
Margaret Hollenbach
A Bethlehem schoolteacher and one of the principal organizers of the 1878 Society, Hollenbach established the earliest surviving witness-copying practice: original wording was retained even when investigators disagreed with the witness's interpretation. Her indexing notebooks supplied the basis for later county cross-reference work.
The 1978 Hollenbach Protocol was named for that principle. She did not participate in the later terminology dispute and expressed no documented view on the modern etymology theories.
1839–1912 • Founding physician
Dr. Amos Weller
Weller convened the first formal meeting after the Monocacy Winter Incident and maintained the Society's early correspondence files from his Bethlehem office. He argued that uncertain reports should be preserved with conventional explanations attached rather than rejected or promoted beyond the available evidence.
Twenty-three numbered statements in his hand remain in the National Archive. Several are incomplete; none has been retrospectively upgraded solely because of his involvement.
1842–1903 • Founding surveyor
Isaac Brann
Brann introduced measured site sketches, property-line notation, drainage direction, and witness-position marking into early Society records. His insistence on scale drawings is the reason several nineteenth-century files can still be compared with modern maps despite major road and property changes.
His field book from 1878–1886 is held in restricted storage because of fragile binding and water damage.
1936–2021 • Archivist and review chair
Helen C. Varga
Varga joined the organization in 1964, remained through the Lexical Schism, and later chaired the committee that reconciled duplicate case numbering after 1978. She supervised the first systematic transfer of acidic newspaper clippings and carbon-copy witness forms into archival sleeves.
Her 1996 memorandum on “clean first statements” remains part of field-member orientation. Varga requested no memorial field event; the Council honors that instruction.