Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Attention Southwest Louisiana Genealogists!

I just wanted to write really quickly about a discovery I made today. I've recently decided to finally source all of my research on my paternal side of the family that comes from Louisiana. This was the first side of the family that I began researching when I was a kid because I've always lived within a few hours of Southwest Louisiana. Well, with the move to North Carolina fast approaching, I've realized that I may not have as much access to these resources. My surname Saturday post on the Trahan family really got me thinking that I may really miss these resources in a few months. Most of my sources have been Father Donald J. Hebert's series of books titled Southwest Louisiana Records: Church and Civil Records. He was a priest that extracted and compiled Catholic, Methodist, and Episcopal church records, as well as courthouse records, all around the Lafayette and Lake Charles areas of Southwest Louisiana. These books spanned the years 1750 to 1909 and were published from 1978 into the 1990s. It stated on his publishing website, however, that he had completed research up to 1921, but that the books had not been published. I was afraid that since he had died about 10 years ago, and not a single book had since been published, that we could just forget about it. Well, after all these years, books covering 1910 to 1915 have been published recently and are now available at my local genealogy library in Baton Rouge! Anyhow, I'm really excited about the find. If anyone needs me to look up something in them, just let me know!

1 comment:

  1. I have noticed that things one gets used to seeing on line about book authors or [media info important at the time], after a time, are very difficult to find. So we have to keep putting it out there. Keep it coming.

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