The following teaser is from the April 19, 2012 edition of jconline.com/usatoday.
CROWN POINT, Ind. (WTW) — Large leather-bound books line the walls of the Lake County [Indiana] recorder’s office.
They contain vital information, primarily about deeds and mortgages dating back to the first land deal with the Potawatomi Indians in 1836.
It’s a wealth of information intriguing to genealogy buffs like Crown Point’s Marlene Polster, a human search engine who tracks down information and helps people round out their family trees.
Those big 10-pound books weigh more than a laptop computer, and Lake County Recorder Michelle Fajman is bent on creating a digitized backup file that anyone can access without trekking down to the Lake County Government Center.
Fajman’s office has partnered with the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society to undertake the arduous job of indexing the records from 5,840 books.
