History Museum News

FUNERAL HOME RECORDS FROM THE PAST SOON AVAILABLE AT HISTORY MUSEUM

The last two weeks members of the Washington County Historical Society have been hard at work transferring funeral home records from the 1930s through the 1990s from file cabinets into easily accessible notebooks.

Museum Director Dorothy Odom stated, “We have had these records for years, but they have been stored in file cabinets in the old Amtrax building. We only  maintained copies of death certificates and vital statistics in notebooks in the museum, but the original files contain so much more history.”

Thousands of records from Washington, Holmes and Jackson counties are contained in six file cabinets.  For example, there are over 450 individual records in just the “B’s”.   Some only have a tiny scrap of paper or a one inch obituary; others have an encyclopedia of information from life insurance, personal letters, newspaper articles, family information, and more – a genealogist’s dream.

The history museum is located at 685 7th Street and is open on Fridays from 9AM until 1PM.  We’re “under construction” right now – the tables are full and there is barely room to squeeze around our exhibits.  When we finish our filing, we will be Spring cleaning!