My friends - A couple of weeks ago, I brought to your attention that, through the good offices of our friend Don Howell, I have acquired the Beasley Monument Company of Paducah grave marker order records, which extend back into the early 1890's and run up to about 1933. The Company had a long record of monument preparation, starting in Wayne Co., TN in the 1870's, and, in 1905, removing to Paducah. They created thousands of grave markers for Tennessee and Kentucky families in counties such as Wayne, Perry, Hardin, Hickman,Lewis, Decatur, Benton, Stewart, Henderson, Carroll, Henry, Weakley, Obion, Gibson, Carroll, Montgomery, Robertson, and others. In Kentucky, the counties most often mentioned include all 8 counties of the Jackson Purchase region, as well as Trigg, Lyon, Livingston, Caldwell, Christian, Logan, Todd, Hopkins, Webster, Union and others. So these records are valuable to both the TN and KY Jackson Purchase area, and to other areas as well, even in other states than TN and KY, although the majority of the firm's business was in TN and KY, but we find orders from IL, AL, MS and GA, as well. I made available the first part of the index that is being prepared for these records, which number close to 5000, in my earlier message. However, that first part did not have the locations of the burials. Beginning with Part 2, the locations are included, and the first 175 names are ready for distribution to anyone who would like to have it. If you would like a copy, please let me know by *private* e-mail, and one will be forwarded to you. A few additional names were added to Part 1, which will also have the locations added after the entire index is completed. As this point, we have completed indexing about 15% of the collection. These records are valuable, because they show who purchased the stone(almost always a relative), and often have drawings of the stones(which, in the case of some of the older ones, the stones themselves may now be gone), the names of the cemeteries in most cases, as well as letters between the Beasley company and those purchasing the stones. Some of these records had not been opened in over 100 years and are quite fragile. Some have been slightly wet, and a few seem to have somehow been burned around the edge at some point, but 95% of the data is legible, and a fair number, after 1905, are typewritten. Unfortunately, the company chose to use paper clips to hold sheets of an order together, which, in most cases, have been in place so long that they have literally become a part of the paper, and removing them takes the little shred of paper where they were placed away with the clip. However, nearly all of these clips were placed in locations which do not affect the data contained in the documents. I am making these partial indices available to our lists subscribers before the complete index is placed in my web store (The Genealogical Books Super Store), so that if anyone sees a name for which they would like to get a digital copy of the documents associated with it, they can do so ahead of the general public. An announcement will be made this month in the GBBS Newsletter about the project. We are trying to index from 200 - 500 names per week, although this rate has been slowed by having to show the locations, which takes more time, but is worth the effort for researchers to have a better idea of whether *that* particular person is theirs, especially if the name is a common one. Another note of interest from the Library of Congress is this announcement: "The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist/ provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library's 1981 publication /Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress/ and will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions. The online checklist also contains links to existing digital images from our collection and will be updated as new images are added." The library has more than 4000 scanned maps online. Navigate to http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/ and explore the tab "Guides to the Collections." They have added numerous additional maps in the past year, which are interesting, since most are late 19th century. And, from the U.S. Geological Survey people: "USGS will shortly announce major additions to the USGS map store. All of the published topographic maps for the states of Kansas, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Colorado have been scanned. Included are all the editions of the historic topographic maps (1882-1940) in the USGS collection. There are holes in the collection as the USGS allowed it to circulate up until about 30 years ago. Also included are the various modern editions of the traditional topographic maps, of varying scales, of the US that many of us have used for finding cemeteries and other applications. Included in this category are the venerable "topo quads" Finally, the most modern USGS topographic maps, termed US Topos, are coming on line. These are true GIS applications with the ability to toggle layers on and off. All versions are free and downloadable as GeoPDF files. Check it out at http://store.usgs.gov <http://store.usgs.gov/>. Click on the map locator tab. More maps are expected to be posted soon." I did not find many maps for the JP region available as yet, but they will be forthcoming soon. An announcement concerning these records will be in the September edition of the Genealogical Books Super Store newsletter, and I am now in the process of indexing them, which is a tremendous undertaking. About a thousand records have been annotated(and my estimate is that there are perhaps 5000 individual records in this collection), and about 700 are in draft form for the Index, which will eventually appear in the GBBS catalog. The purpose of the project is to make digital copies of these records available through the Store at a very minimal cost, whether the record contains two pages or twenty. The records are old and brittle, some have been in or near moisture, and a few have had some burns inflicted on them over the years, but, in general, they are in remarkably good condition for their age. Some are even typewritten, especially the later ones. In keeping with my long time practice of advance notice to the subscribers of the lists I host in the JP region, I wanted to let our subscribers know that if any of you would like to see the draft of the index *so far completed* - with thousands more names to be added - if you will contact me *off list*, I will be glad to send a copy to you. Please bear in mind that the draft index now contains probably only about 10% of the names it will eventually hold, but since it covers many counties in both TN and KY, it may be of interest to those of you pursuing TN lines as well as JP and KY lines. This project has caused me to place the Graves County Circuit Court Order books work on temporary hold, since these records offer so many opportunities for genealogical clues, and in so many different places. Many thanks to our good friend, Don Howell, for saving these records from going to the landfill. -B ===================================================================================================== ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to KYJACKSONPURCHASE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message