Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:
It’s Saturday Night again –
time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along – cue the Mission Impossible music!):
1) What genealogy record collections would you like to see digitized or indexed? List one or more.
2) Put it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook post. Please leave a link in a comment to this post.
What genealogy record collection would I like to see digitized? For me, my answer might be obvious: LAND RECORDS!
While there are a lot of land records already digitized on FamilySearch, there are also areas of the country where those land records were not filmed. Thus, the records are not available for digitization. While I can understand the privacy issue when it comes to many types of genealogical records, I think it would be hard for someone to argue that land records over 100 years old should be kept private. Unfortunately, records from the deeds office are not always available.
Secondly, I would like to see county governments allow FamilySearch to publicly share those older land records versus requiring users to visit an affiliate library or a Family History center.
Thirdly, I would like to see other records from the deeds office made available. For most counties in Kansas, this would include the Range index and Miscellaneous Records. Some county Recorder of Deeds may also maintain records of military discharges.
I would make the same plea for records from other offices at the county level: let the records over 100 years old be made available for genealogical and/or historical research. This would include records such as
- Probate Records
- Naturalization Records
- Marriage Licenses, bonds and applications
- School records
- Birth registers
- Death registers
- Court cases