The IAPS is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Edwin Jacques Albania Collection, containing Bibles, books, journals, magazines, photographs, postcards, audio and video recordings, correspondence, prayer letters, missionary reports, tracts, brochures, bulletins, and miscellaneous articles.
Edwin E. Jacques was a Baptist missionary who, with his wife Dorothy, served in Albania from 1932–1940. He studied the Albanian people his entire life, writing a popular history entitled The Albanians: an Ethnic History from Prehistoric Times to the Present (McFarland, 1995).
When Edwin and Dorothy Jacques passed away, Larry and Dana Stucky, missionaries to Albania, reached out to their children about the Albanian materials they left behind. On April 24, 1998, Edwin M. Jacques wrote a letter on behalf of his brother Dan Jacques and sister Gloria Jacques Seidenberg, indicating that they were sending the collection (nine boxes of material) to the Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary (now “Denver Seminary”) for an Albanian Archival Center. Edwin M. Jacques wrote, “We believe Dad would have wanted this source to be made available for Christian studies on Albania … Our prayers are with you as you manage Dad’s materials on this country of the double-headed eagle he loved so much.”
Larry and Dana Stucky, and later David Hosaflook, organized and preserved this material in cooperation with the staff of the Denver Seminary library.
In 2014 the IAPS began discussing with Denver Seminary the possibility of moving the collection to Albania where it could be more accessible to students of Albanian and Albanian Protestant history. On November 16, 2015, David Hosaflook presented a formal request to Denver Seminary for this transfer. Meanwhile Dana Stucky acquired the blessing of Gloria Jacques Seidenberg (the last living child of Edwin E. Jacques) for the transfer. On this basis, Denver Seminary dean and provost Dr. Randy MacFarland and the seminary’s archivist Ms. Sarah Miller both approved the transfer.
On May 5, 2016, David Hosaflook, director of the IAPS, retrieved the collection personally from Denver Seminary and transferred it to the IAPS in Albania.
The collection is now being processed, preserved, classified, scanned, and archived for long-term safety and benefit to the Albanian public. Unfortunately, proper preparation requires time and finances, but we are satisfied that the process has begun and that Albanian students will no longer need to travel to Denver to access these materials.
Our target date for opening the collection to researchers is in 2017.