Volunteers celebrate completion of index

Virginia Bade, Myrle and Stella Coffman and Jeanette Lindberg, volunteers at Illinois Prairie District Public Library, celebrated the completion of the obituary index from the Woodford Sentinel and Metamora Herald newspapers.

In 2001, volunteers at the Metamora Branch of Illinois Prairie District Public Library began scanning microfilm from the Woodford Sentinel for obituary notices.

With each death notice, they completed a card with the name of the person, name and date of the paper and page and column number where the obituary appeared.

These facts were then entered into a data base and made available for genealogists to use to find information about their relatives.

The volunteers soon covered the Sentinel from Jan 20, 1887 until Dec. 6, 1889, and started searching for obituaries found in the microfilm of the Metamora Herald beginning with the Dec. 20, 1889 issue.

After a few years, births and marriages were added to this data base.

The research from these two newspapers is now completed up to the July 7, 2010, closing of the Metamora Herald.

A person can come into the library, use the microfilm machines to look up a specific birth, marriage, or death notice, and make a copy for 10 cents a sheet.

Visit our website www.ipdpl.org or contact IPDPL Metamora Branch at 367-4594 for more information and cost.