The Tennessee State Library and Archives has taken a page from Ancestry and other online services and made it easier for genealogists and historians to search for records on their website.
Inspired by the way Ancestry searches multiple record groups from a single screen, staff at the state library and archives worked with the Secretary of State’s Information Technology Division over a two-year period to create a new search tool.
The all-in-one Genealogy Index Search brings together more than a million names appearing in Tennessee’s most important historical records. It includes sections on death records, military records, and general Tennessee research.
The individual indexes were compiled by library and archives staff, starting in the 1990s. The names of nearly 5,000 soldiers, former slaves and citizens whose bodies were buried or moved and re-buried by Cornelius are included in the index.
In what appears to be a relatively small number of cases, the indexed entry leads to a digital image of the original record. Over time, more digital images will be added to the index.
Genealogists will now hope their own city, provincial, state, county or national archives will be inspired to create a similar search engine.
More information about the search engine can be found in the Tennessee State Library and Archives’ blog post.
