FRANKFORT - Tucked in the state Capitol's cavernous basement is an office cubbyhole containing volumes upon volumes of large books tracing the history of land in Kentucky. Those books, many of which have been hidden from the public eye for years, are now available worldwide on the Internet. They're part of the collection in the Secretary of State's Land Office. Now, historians, genealogists and those who are just plain curious can go online, at www.sos.ky.gov, and access a plethora of scanned images of historical land documents. And there are more available every day. The agency launched its redesigned Web site late last month, giving people fingertip access to thousands of handwritten historical documents. "Our new Kentucky Land Office Web site represents a researcher's dream," Secretary of State Trey Grayson said. Original land warrants, complete with red wax seals, dating back to before Kentucky was a state are there. "It's almost three-dimensional, isn't it? You want to touch this," Kandie Adkinson, an administrator in the office, says as she points at her computer screen. "This is available around the world." The secretary of state's office has been responsible for housing and maintaining Kentucky's land records since the 1930s, Adkinson said. Years ago, they were kept folded up in brown envelopes and bound with twine. Some were kept in boxes. Many were available on microfilm. But people had to know exactly what they were looking for if they were to be much help. Today, they're a virtual electronic gold mine for historians, attorneys, surveyors and others in search of historical land documents. Technology has allowed the agency to create a system that allows users to sort through them electronically. Veterans of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution were issued land warrants as payment for their military service. A soldier's rank dictated the number of acres to which he was entitled. Those warrants could then be used to obtain land patents -- also available online. Original patent documents and land surveys are there, along with the Virginia and Kentucky general assemblies' acts that created the state's 120 counties. The bound collection housed in the Capitol contains more than 1,000 volumes. Adkinson and her small team are working to get the rest of the collection up. "People will not only be able to know they exist, they'll be able to research them, and ideally they'll be able to see them," Adkinson said "Then what they do to preserve their family history will benefit all of us, because that's the history of Kentucky." To all: Above as information. Immediately on a Poythress search will pop up William Poythress (Lt./Capt.) who received a 4000 acre grant in Kentucky for Rev. War service. We are fortunate to have the 1794 will of William Poythress (RBB 211 2, m. Mary Gilliam) because a copy was brought to KY, likely as a part of trying to claim William's 4000 acres by his sons. On a separate track in VA, sons Joshua, Thomas & William were petitioning the government to pay them the "balance oweing" to their father for Rev. War service on the last 5 of his 8 years service. This petition does not appear to have been successful. A Joshua Poythress (presumably the same as above) was tussling his way through the KY court system with 5 various lawsuits against defendants Porter (3), J. S. Wilson (1) and Y. Carson (1) as late as 1827....all of those documents (I'm guessing) don't seem to be on the KY website advertised so they are probably still in the "bundles" I was told about in 1999. In any case, I don't know that we have any direct descendants of that particular line so I'll try to get over to Frankfort in the future to see if they will let me "unbundled" the documents. This will make an interesting piece of family history. At the time we were looking at this back around 2000, Craig Scott (I'm going on memory here) made a pretty good case that this Joshua Poythress was the fellow who wound up in New Jersey and lived to a ripe old age. I may need to be set straight on some of my "facts" in this case but we don't have nearly all the evidence yet. Any helpful comments will be appreciated and added to the file if they ever let me into the "bundles" in Frankfort. Maynard

Thanks, Maynard, for the update on these long-inaccessible KY records. BPN