RECORDING FINAL HISTORY --
Volunteers Spend A Year Recording, Preserving Local Obituaries

By Sarah Heimburger
Daily Journal Assistant Editor

It's a tedious job, but the volunteers who meet in the Farmington Public Library basement three times a week know the fruits of their labors will not go unappreciated by the steady stream of genealogy buffs into town.

The volunteer who spearheaded the effort to record the deaths, Mabel Reed of Desloge, said last week that work on the now more than 25 volume set of death notices is progressing nicely, although the work will, by its very nature, never be completely done.

"Oh, yes, it will never be done," she said as she sat with fellow obit-snippers June and Frances Corben, and library worker Terry Hall. "We keep getting more and more contributions of past obits from people," and, she added delicately, they unfortunately receive new notices every day.

Reed had the beginnings of an obit collection for many years, she said, which simply sat in her basement until her neighbor helped her clip and paste them on notebook paper, put them into notebooks, and photocopy them at library.

"I thought, why do I have these in my basement, they're not doing anyone any good here," she said. "My neighbor, Maxine French, helped with the cutting, trimming and pasting. Then we got involved with the Farmington Library and it's gone from there."

"Without the volunteers, we'd never be able to take on a project of this size," she said. "And I would like to thank all the people who have donated old obituaries. I'm hoping more people who might have some from 1815-1835, who died before the turn of the century, may donate some so we can record them, too."

Indeed, the group plans to begin working on the "really, really old obits" beginning after the first of January.

The road to recording the county's past hasn't been entirely smooth, to which Hall and Reed will readily attest. Mistakes and inefficiency were kinks ironed out as the group went along, making changes in materials and the process as they were called for.

"It wasn't scientific by any means," said Hall, referring to the beginning of the project. "At first we wanted to include everyone, but we cut it back to people who live in St. Francois County, who were born, lived, worked or died here. We started out with the surrounding counties, but that was way too much."

"We made a few mistakes," agreed Mabel, shrugging. "We probably would've been finished by now if we hadn't. We learned that the cement glue we were using crinkled the paper, and it was hard to get off. Then, we had so many donations, we went ahead and copied them and hadn't looked at the others first, so we wound up with duplicates."

The volunteers eventually developed a process so the obituaries were brought in, copied, trimmed, alphabetized, and checked against completed books to prevent duplication. When the books are finished, they are placed on the shelves of the genealogy room at the library.

"You wouldn't believe how much use these books get, and how many people use that room," said Hall. "I'm afraid people may not realize just what an industry genealogy can be -- it actually pulls money into the city. People may spend a night in a hotel here, then go out to eat, maybe take in a movie.

"And probably half the people are all from [out] of town," she continued. "I've had inquiries from England and Germany. We've had people in from Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Texas.

"I got a call from a man in Texas one time who wanted to know if we had a record of obits. He wanted to know about this, this and this name. So I looked them up for him and told him we had them, would he like me to fax them to him. And he said, 'If you have those names, we're coming up.' And they did."

Hall said it's just one of the perks of helping people find out more about their ancestors.

"If you could see how excited people get when they find their grandfathers, and discover they have ties to the area," she said. "One lady was looking in our archives, when she hit upon a picture. She was just looking at it at first, but then her eyes lit up and she said, 'That's my grandmother!' It was completely unexpected to her.

"It makes you feel good about helping people find their roots."

Published by THE DAILY JOURNAL, Park Hills, St. Francois Co. MO, Mon. Nov. 4, 1996.