Are Archives Relevant?

When people talk about archives and historical research, they always seem to use words like old, musty, dusty, decay, brittle, and similar terms.  I think some users expect me to be wearing a cowl and skulking about the catacombs...excuse me, basement stacks...with my candle-lit lantern!   

But this past week has shown again the relevance of archives and what we do.   The newspaper highlighted the issue of urban farming and the question of raising chickens in city limits...an issue that is really an offshoot of the old "victory gardens" issue and home-grown food reminiscent of the Great Depression and doing more with less.
First thing that morning we had a researcher looking at the Pensacola City Ordinances -- the 1950, 1959, and 1968 editions -- for what the old laws said about chickens.   Before zoning and the coming of suburbia, the laws and regulations were less stringent, and we need to know what they were and what they said to help us draft 21st century legislation.

Similarly the Sunday newspaper announced in an Op-Ed feature of the restoring the name of Rosamond Johnson to the signage and dedication of Johnson Beach.   This archivist spent several days looking through newspapers after the Gulf Islands acquired Johnson Beach from the County Commission as a researcher wanted to find when the original sign went up.  I didn't find it, but that's what happens in the archives....sometimes you find it, sometimes you don't, and sometimes you find something else that inspires and enthuses your spirit. 

Are archives relevant .....heck yes!

Musings on Funeral Home Records

Some years back, the Fisher-Pou funeral home donated its records, 1926-1979, to the West Florida Genealogical Society and the Pensacola Public Library.  In turn, these organizations donated them to the University Archives and West Florida History Center at the University of West Florida.   I was able to find funding to have them microfilmed and donate a set of that film to the West Florida Genealogical Library.   We still have the original records and another copy of the microfilm.

The funeral home arranged its records chronologically and numbered each funeral or death that they handled and put these in a binder.   When the binder became unwieldly (560-840 pages!), they started a new binder.   So in all there were 36 binders.   Within the binders, they had a typed page for each year of the names of the funerals/deaths they handled.

Roy Wilkinson led the effort to begin to index these based on the fact that Book #36 (last book) had its last burial as #9493.  That seemed reasonable and the indexing project was going great until I discovered that the numbering system ran 1926-1963 (#1 - 10,103) at which point they started numbering again, so 1963-1979 (#1-9493).    There weren't 9,493 names to index, there were instead 19,596 names!!

I don't think the index was ever fully finished.  But today we can find the funeral record using the index sheets from each volume, the Social Security Death Index, the various cemetery headstone index, and other means.  The collection is very valuable for genealogists.

There is a sheet for each death/funeral.   On this form, the front contains information about the deceased, family, cemetery, cause of death, etc.   On the back is pasted a clipping of the obituary and notations of who and when the account was paid.   I discovered that there were Volumes 37-39 which were for those whose funerals were
not paid.   These were "collection" volumes.

I've been slightly embarassed when I've provided genealogists with a copy of their relative's funeral/death and it came from the 'unpaid' volume -- and I've told them that.   The reaction invariably is laughter!
One lady said it made a great story to tell the family..."and John never paid the account!"

One fascinating overlooked fact about the funeral home records is that even if they did not actually do the funeral, they did make a notation if a deceased was sent to another city or state, so there is a paper trail occasionally for that "missing" ancestor.

We're always glad to look up funerals in the Fisher-Pou Funeral Home Records (Collection M2000-08).

We're Proud to Help!

The Pensacola News Journal reports this morning that after 67 years, a fallen Pensacola Police officer, Edward O'Brien Pursell, will be honored by being added to the Pensacola Police Department's memorial for fallen officers.  The article reports that Cindy Cherry began doing research on her grandfather in the archives at the University of West Florida.   Finding a 1944 article from the Pensacola News Journal about his heart attack after arresting a person who attacked him, Cindy found more information in a police docket showing that he died in the line of duty.   Congratulations Cindy!