Archive-Work: Genealogies of Loyalty in a Macedono-Bulgarian Colony

Through close study of a 1930s legal dispute within a Macedono-Bulgarian church congregation in Steelton, Pennsylvania, this article explores the importance of “archive-work” as a particular form of political activism. Archive-work is here presented as conscious and willful attempts by historical agents to imbue a particular narrative, or set of claims, with the authority of “official record.” Such archive-work is regularly undertaken by nationalizing states: this analysis, though, focuses on the small-scale efforts by a determined group of individuals to disrupt a state-sponsored narrative and enlist the authority of Pennsylvania law to legitimize their alternative version of the past.