DePaul University will become the new home of the archives of the Vincentians’ Midwest Province next year, expanding the university’s importance as a historical and spiritual research center for the Vincentian tradition, according to the Rev. Edward Udovic, C.M., senior executive for University Mission at DePaul.

The Vincentian Fathers and Brothers` was founded by St.Vincent de Paul, for whom DePaul is named and from whose legacy the university mission of access to education and community service is derived.

According to an agreement signed in late October, the province’s DeAndreis-Rosati Memorial Archives from St. Mary of the Barrens in Perryville, Mo., will move to the John T. Richardson Library, 2350 N. Kenmore Ave., on the Lincoln Park Campus, in April 2001. Though the province will retain ownership and control over the collection, DePaul’s University Archives staff will provide management and conservation services while working to develop the collection’s scholarly and exhibitionary potential.

Udovic, who represented the university in five years of negotiations to acquire the archives, stressed the importance of this new asset. “With DePaul as the home of the Vincentian Studies Institute and this addition to our existing collection of materials, we are establishing DePaul as one of the Vincentian community’s most important historical and spiritual research centers,” he said. “The archives represent a rich historical resource documenting Vincentian contributions in the history of American Catholicism since 1816.”

Kathryn DeGraff, university archivist, estimates it will take three to five years to sort through the 800 linear feet of documents, but she is excited by the potential wealth of historical information contained in the files—including early records about DePaul’s founding. Some museum objects and artifacts from the Vincentians’ original settlement in Perryville may be included with the collection, said DeGraff. No monetary value has been set on the collection, she added.

“We don’t really know what all is there, but I am looking very forward to exploring every foot of these primary source materials and making them available to students, researchers and scholars as soon as possible,” said DeGraff. “One of the wonderful things about moving them to a university setting is that they will become a far more accessible and utilized resource.”

The opening of the collection is expected to take place early in the 2001-2002 academic year.

Other Vincentian universities in the United States are Niagara and St. John’s, both in New York state. DePaul – with an enrollment of 20, 547 students – is the largest Catholic university in the country.