Introducing the Denig Manuscript Project

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media is pleased to announce the launch of the Denig Manuscript Project, created in collaboration with the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.

The Denig Manuscript Project brings an eighteenth-century, Pennsylvania-made manuscript and watercolors to life through a collaborative multimedia digital project. High-resolution digital images, updated translations, forensic analysis, sound recordings, and contextual scholarship provide enhanced access to this extraordinary document of religious life in early America. Ludwig Denig (1755–1830) created the ink and watercolor bound volume in 1784, and it remained in private hands until the 1970s. Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library acquired the manuscript as a gift in 2020. Recognizing both the importance of the volume and its fragile physical state, Winterthur received support from the Schwartz Foundation and The Paper Project at the Getty to study and digitize the book. Winterthur and a team of scholars worked with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media to build a digital humanities site and provide greater access to Denig’s work.

At RRCHNM, our lead developer-scholar, Jason Heppler, worked with our graduate research assistant, Savannah Scott, to create a compelling digital edition of the manuscript. Project directors Lincoln Mullen and John Turner joined scholars and curators at Winterthur to provide advice about the creation of the digital edition. We are pleased to have created a beautiful website to showcase this beautiful manuscript from eighteenth-century Pennsylvania.

To read more about the manuscript, please see the announcement from our partners at Winterthur, and view the project here.