Projects
In addition to assisting you with research about the people and subjects most relevant to you, we are constantly upgrading our collections, offerings and abilities to make your experience at the Archives most meaningful. We are maintaining and expanding our collections of Clay County historical information to provide research assistance to you.
Current Projects:
- Flat-folding and abstracting the original Probate, Civil, and Criminal Court Records continues, in conjunction with the Circuit Clerk's office. The Circuit Clerk's staff scans each and every page of these old documents to preserve them for posterity.
- Other local government records are also being imaged and will be indexed for addition to the Master Index.
- There are over 800 Civil War Soldiers buried in Clay County so we've taken it upon ourselves to identify them and compile the list into a new book. We are culling information about each soldier such as the cemetery in which they are buried, their birth- and death-dates, as much biographical information as we can find and even pictures as are available. Now published and available for purchase, Divided Loyalties, includes chapters on the Civil War in Clay County, military units during the war and more!
- Unfortunately, people keep dying so we are constantly updating our Obituary and Cemetery Records. And we often discover old cemeteries that we didn't know existed. It is a never-ending project.
- When we abstract each of our collections, we index that information to enable us (and you) to find that info easier and quicker. In addition to each collection index, we have a Master Index that includes pertinent data about each item the collection indexes. The Master Index, in the form of a name search, is on this website to help you in your research. Additional search capabilities are in the works, to allow you subject look ups before requesting more information/research from the Archives, based upon what you find.
- For our members, we publish a Quarterly Newsletter that includes various articles of interest. Collecting, organizing, writing and publishing these articles is an on-going process.
- We are digitizing and abstracting our Photograph Collection as fast as we can. These images are being added to the Master Index as time allows.
- The Archives' Map Collection is extensive and we are always looking for ways to make them accessible, including digitizing and adding names (of people and places) to the electronic index.