Jordan, John W. (John Woolf), 1840-1921

John Woolf Jordan, an editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, also had a long association with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He began his life membership in 1864, was secretary of the Council from 1873 to 1879; corresponding secretary from 1874 to 1880; associate librarian from 1885 to 1903, when he became the librarian, an office he held until his death in 1921.

David Zeisberger served as a Moravian minister.

John Woolf Jordan was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution in 1888 and an editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography from 1887 until his death.

John Woolf Jordan (1840-1921) was a Philadelphia historian specializing in genealogies and personal histories, especially those of Pennsylvania families.

Jordan served as librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania from 1903 until his death in 1921. He served as a lieutenant during the Civil War and also as the first president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Historical Societies, vice-president of the Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, and registrar of the Pennsylvania Society Sons of the Revolution. He edited and contributed to histories and genealogies such as Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania (1911) and Colonial Families of Philadelphia (1911). Jordan also edited several printings of historical diaries, narratives, and personal histories, many of them from the Revolutionary War period. In 1902 he received a Doctor of Laws degree from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was married twice, to Lillie Moore in 1866 (with whom he had two sons) and to Anne Page in 1873 (with whom he had two sons and one daughter).

Jordan, John W. Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania: Biography, Vol 2. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1914. Available online via Google Books at http://books.google.com/books?id=iAK8-K1oPPgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed September 13, 2012). Mullen, Shaun. Email to L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin, September 15, 2012.