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Beyond Books: Lake County’s time machine
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County has a time machine that lives at the Lake County Library.
If you’re expecting a flashy, nuclear-powered DeLorean, this isn’t it. It’s just a spindly, knob-covered apparatus attached to a computer, but, oh, the stories it can tell when a microfilm reel rolls under the lens. Week by week, decades of Lake County history flash across the time portal screen.
Small-town newspapers were the hot social media of the day in earlier times. Through the time machine’s microfilms modern readers can discover who had a new car, who was in the hospital, who had company from out of town and almost anything else you could want to know about someone. Political scandals and natural disasters play out before your eyes.
Sharon Ford and Kathi Alvey are frequent time-travelers at the library, spending hours at a time looking for historical gold. Ford is following her family saga and Alvey is compiling an index for genealogists.
While searching for local obituaries, Kathi Alvey a volunteer with the Lake County Genealogical Society realized that Marge Ingebretsen’s Index of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Lake County Newspapers 1863-1949 was incomplete, so Alvey took on indexing the obituaries that Ingebretsen hadn’t.
She soon realized that there’s “no such thing as a short-term project.”
Alvey searches the newspapers several hours each week to locate and copy obituaries, a project that has taken years and is not yet complete. She plans to make her index available either online or as a printed book.
“It is very easy to get distracted when reading newspaper microfilm and find yourself looking at other articles, especially if you have an interest in local history, buildings, crime or families,” Alvey said.
Sharon Ford has discovered seventeen years of detailed family history in the time machine, all chronicled by her great-grandmother Mary Catherine “Kate” Butler who covered the Big Valley beat for the Lake County Bee from 1921until her death in 1938.
In Ingebretsen’s Index Ford found Kate’s obituary listed and from there learned of Kate’s employment at the Lake County Bee.
As Ford read Kate’s Big Valley news articles she realized that Kate was documenting the daily life her own family and their neighbors. Sharon has found out where relatives worked, when and why family members and friends visited the Butler Ranch, and has found stories about birthdays, holiday get-togethers, family reunions and illnesses of various family members.
She has started collecting Kate’s articles to share with her relatives. Ford now feels a special closeness to the great-grandmother she never met and is delighted to learn about the roles that Kate Butler played in the family and in Lake County
Ford said, “This project has brought me great joy and an appreciation of the role that my family has played in the history of Lake County. I know that I have so much more to discover. The microfilms have been invaluable to my research. It is my wish that this resource be preserved and protected.“
The Lake County Library receives several queries a month from people hunting for obituaries or other stories.
Some people are working on their own family histories, other queries are from businesses trying to find missing heirs.
Most queries are routine, others not so much. The library has answered questions about several murders.
Another query was for the obituary for Douglass Cross who wrote the lyrics for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and lived for a time in Lake County.
The library collaborates with the Lake County Museum by locating articles pertinent to museum exhibits.
The time machine is available to the public and the library staff is happy to show patrons how to use the machine which can scan, print, email or save images from the microfilm. The machine is free to use, there is a small charge for printing.
Research queries can be submitted through the library’s Web site http://library.lakecountyca.gov .
Jan Cook works for the Lake County Library.