From Carole Palmer (via KYGenWeb Coordinator's List):
Old Ky. Records Resurface, Prepared for Public (The Associated Press)
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kentucky land, census and marriage records from the late 1700s to the 1900s have recently resurfaced and are being prepared for public inspection.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported the books are being indexed to make information easier to find and documents are being scanned so they can be made available for public viewing.
The original record books will not be available for the public.
"The documents are so old and the pages are so fragile that I really would not be willing to put them out there for the public to peruse through," Deputy Fayette County Clerk Linda Potter said.
Potter found out about a volume of land patents containing the names of the commonwealth's earliest settlers, called the "Doomsday Book." The book, originally in the clerk's office, had been moved to Frankfort in the early 1970s. Microfilming at the Department of Libraries and Archives should be complete within two weeks, said Barbara Teague, state archivist and records administrator. The Doomsday Book contains the names of settlers who applied for land patents from 1779 through 1780, when Kentucky was still part of Virginia. Kentucky became a state in 1792. Kandie Adkinson, an administrative supervisor in the Kentucky Land Office, said the books are important for genealogists who want to document history and traditions of family members.
"Additionally, by determining if an ancestor received a commissioners' certificate for settlement prior to 1792, individuals may qualify for membership in First Families of Kentucky," a hereditary society established in 2005, Adkinson said.
Another record book recovered by Fayette County clerks, the "Land Entry Book," contains similar information from 1783 to 1784. Several years' worth of marriage licenses were also found in the county clerk's storage area. The clerk's office also recovered several books containing Fayette County school census records from 1896 to 1909 for both white and black students. The census books contain students' names, addresses, names of parents and siblings, and dates of birth. Potter said the school records are a "significant discovery" for black genealogists. "Unfortunately, the Fayette County clerk's office doesn't have a lot of records for black people to go on," she said.
[Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com]
From Don Counts: Through Google Books you can get back issues of the Ancestry magazine free... here is the link to the Jan/Feb 2009 issue ~ http://books.google.com/books?id=FTgEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&lr=lang_en&as_pt=MAGAZINES&rview=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
You can also pull up all back issues!
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