By WHITNEE ICE
St. Joseph Post
The St. Joseph Public Library is working on a searchable online database of death records from 1891 to 1910.
Local History Librarian for the St. Joseph Public Library Jennifer Sanders-Tutt says there are two ledgers from the city's physician of the time that are now being transcribed to be accessed online.
"Those will be available to be searched and of course we still have the actual ledgers that are archived and preserved but this is allowing us to make it more accessible to our community and our patrons," Sanders-Tutt tells St. Joseph Post.
Sanders-Tutt says the pandemic has made this process difficult but the library wants these records to be available for public use.
"We will make the community aware every time it is updated because we want people to be able to use that information," says Sanders-Tutt.
Sanders-Tutt says there is a lot of room for error when transcribing these handwritten documents.
"What we are hoping for is when people look through and they find errors, they will contact us and let us know," says Sanders-Tutt.
Sanders-Tutt says some of the documentation may have misspellings or inaccuracies in the original ledgers.
"We want to correct that. We want it to be as accurate as possible for people," says Sanders-Tutt.
Sanders-Tutt says the state of Missouri did not officially require birth and death records to be kept until 1910.