My 1,000th Post With Some Important Announcements!

First of all, thank all of you who have stopped by my little corner of the internet to read my ramblings! I wanted an outlet for all my little Ouachita parish history tidbits I happened to stumble across, mainly to keep for future reference! I am just tickled pink (and greatly humbled) that you all found them interesting too. Thank you!

Secondly, I wanted to let you all know that we have a working copy of “Encyclopedia of Individuals and Founding Families of the Ouachita Valley, Part 3” by Dr. E. Russ Williams, Jr. Many people have been greatly disappointed that he never published it. When he passed away, the State Archives in Baton Rouge received his collection of documents and photos. I was told his working copy of Part 3 was not found. I was disappointed. A few months before the pandemic hit, I went to look at the collection and they had FOUND three working copies of Part 3 (P-Z names)! I nearly cried! I was allowed to copy one of them for the Genealogy department in Monroe and planned on going back to look through the other two to fill in as much as possible. Once I had all of what I could find of Part three, I was going to have the library bind it and put it in our collection. I posted a hint on this blog that it was coming soon. Then the Corona virus hit. I haven’t been back to Baton Rouge. I have the one copy in a binder, with the pages in sleeves at my desk. If you would like to see it, come by the Genealogy Department of the Ouachita Parish Public Library on 18th street M-F between 9 and 6. I will be happy to show it to you. It is a VERY rough draft with some of his notes and corrections in the margins. We are the only place outside the State Archives that has it and it will never be published! They wanted to make sure Monroe had a copy for this area to look at since it is about this area! When I do get a chance to go back to Baton Rouge, I will make sure I have the rest and have it bound for us!

And finally, our IT department is working on putting our obituary index of Monroe papers from 1825 – 1990 online and searchable on our website. When that happens, I will let you all know and give you a link. I was hopeful it would be ready for my 1,000th post but not yet. As of this writing, they are still working on it. We as a department have been working on this for 27 years and are EXTREMELY proud of it! Up until this moment, the public have only been able to access the indexes in book form. We are very excited for this to happen! Once that is up, the marriage notices indexes will be the next to go online! Stay tuned! Big things are coming!

Thanks again for your support and happy 1,000th post to me!

Lora