The Faces of Volunteerism

I make frequent trips to the Ohio Genealogical Society. 

Many times I'm there on Monday, when the facility is closed.

Each Monday, for at least the past five years, 

a group of volunteers have met to work on probate files from the Richland County, Ohio courthouse.

Volunteers meet each Monday at OGS to work on probate files.

Past-president of OGS, Sunda Peters (seated in green) has been the fearless leader of this group.

They are unfolding, unstapling, and getting massive amounts of folders ready for digitizing.

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A small portion of the probate files coming from the Richland County, Ohio courthouse.

These probate files are some of the earliest records in Ohio, beginning in 1813.  That's just ten years after Ohio became a state!

The box in the upper right corner represents the many staples and other items used to attach papers together.

They are currently working on the year 1900, and have about five more years of work to do.

FamilySearch has hired a contractor, who is at the courthouse filming the files that have been taken apart, unstapled, and put into manila folders.

Currently, she is on the year 1847, so Sunda and her staff are trying to keep her from catching up with them.

After they are sent to FamilySearch (weekly, I assume), they will be available for viewing, just like on a microfilm reader.

Then, they will be up for indexing.

That's how this process works.

Eventually, researchers will be able to search for ancestors by name, and bring up the actual image.

The final product will be probate files that cover the years

1813 - 1935.

Then, the project will be finished.

That's how it all comes together.