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The oldest public repository of archival history in the United States is the Library of Congress — though several private institutions, such as ones at Harvard, predate it by several hundred years.
However, the oldest state archive in the nation is located in Montgomery, at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Founded by an act of the state legislature in 1901, the ADAH has become the model for other state archival libraries and historical preservation.
The ADAH was the brainchild of UA Law alum, Thomas McAdory Owen. He and his wife Marie Bankhead (daughter of Congressman John Bankhead), sought to preserve the fascinating history of a state that was being lost to the passage of time and the dormancy of the Alabama Historical Society.