Hi all. First of all I want to let everyone know that the Jay Co. Civil War
discharge's are coming along nicely. Most have been transcribed and emailed back to
me to prepare for the webpage. Thanks to all who volunteered to transcribe these.
Several of our list subscribers have generously offered their time to do this tedious
work. Additionally, Phyllis Franklin has been kind enough to devote a lot of time typing
newspaper clippings from Jay Co. about Civil War Soldiers from Jay Co. Those will also be
included on the new page. Bob Shannon was also kind enough to email a note to me that was
passed down through his family regarding the death of another Jay Co. Civil War soldier.
Thanks to him as well. If anyone else has clippings or other items about Jay Co. Civil
War soldiers, feel free to email them to me and I will gladly get those added to the new
page as well. I have been proof-reading the transcribed records, and preparing them and
the clippings for the webpag!
e. Wayne will be creating the new page and adding these records to the page. A big thank
you to Wayne also, who has been a big help with the webpage.
On another note, I have finally completed the first cd of marriage returns for Jay Co. I
have scanned almost 1,000 marriage returns covering 5 years of Jay Co. marriages. This cd
includes the marriage returns from Jan of 1920 through Dec. 1924. The marriage returns
are full of great information. These contain not only the names of bride and groom, but
also parents names, birth places, age, occupation, maiden name of mother, number of times
married, place of marriage, place of residence, and witnesses (which were often
relatives). Not only have I scanned these all, but I have created an index by bride and
grooms names. These were scanned into adobe acrobat, and the index is actually clickable
links. You simply scroll to the name of interest, then click the link to go directly to
that image. Of course the image can also be easily printed. I chose to scan these into
adobe for several reasons. One of which is the fact that the adobe acrobat reader
software is free to d!
ownload from the web. Most everyone already has the adobe reader software on their
computer. The cost of the cd is $20.00 plus shipping, but I will sell them for $15.00
plus shipping for the first two weeks.
I will also do lookups from the index. I will check the index for any surnames you wish,
and will let you know the names of brides and grooms listed with those surnames. However,
please do not ask me or expect me to send you all of the info from the marriage return.
That is simply not fair to me. I have spent an enormous amount of time scanning nearly
1,000 marriages returns, and then going over them one by one and indexing both brides and
grooms. At some point I will probably have the index of names from these cd's
included on the webpage; but will be a while before I can do that. I will soon be doing
more of these marriage returns the same way. I hope to get more of these done over the
next few months while the weather is cold and I can't photograph the cemeteries. I
plan on completing photographing all of the Jay Co. cemeteries next spring and summer. I
have photographed all of the stones in about half of the cemeteries in the county (over
30). If all goes well,!
I will do the remaining cemeteries next year.
If anyone has questions or comments about any of the above, feel free to email me at
rexwb(a)insightbb.com .
Rex Bertram
PO Box 651
Redkey, IN 47373
Have an Ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War? Would you like to have his Pension
file? Email me for details.
Jay County Indiana Webpage co-ordinator
http://www.rootsweb.com/~injay/
Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, or Michigan research help
http://home.insightbb.com/~rexwb/index.htm
I do Free Genealogy Look-ups from many sources.
Check out my web page.
http://www.angelfire.com/in4/genealogyhelp/lookup.html