Alachua County gained national recognition this week when the Clerk of the Court’s Ancient Records Project received the Florida State Genealogical Society 2014 Preservation Award.
In the last several years, the clerk’s office has been working to transcribe all of Alachua County’s old records to make them available online for free.
Alachua County Clerk of the Court and Comptroller J.K. Irby said his goal for the project is to make the records useful for people researching their family histories.
“I’d hate to go down there to the warehouse where we keep these old records and see a lot of things that would be important to families and people and know that they could never find them,” he said.
Irby said the most important thing the project has accomplished is making the records searchable by name. He said he typed in his grandfather’s name and found his Alachua County marriage license from 1919.
“I didn’t even know he got married in Alachua County, and it’s that type of stuff that just makes it really powerful and really great,” he said.
That idea of connecting people with their ancestors feeds into his motivation to lead the project, he said. “We can do that for a family, and it makes it all worthwhile.”
FSGS award chair Kearby Parker said in most counties, researching family history would require a trip to the courthouse or hiring a certified genealogist. She said she hopes the project will serve as an example to other counties.
“That really is the purpose of giving the award, which was not only to recognize those projects that are worthy, but also to spread the word about them so that other people might want to follow suit,” she said.
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 3/25/2014 under the headline "County recognized for ancestry project"]
