Macoupin County IL - Macoupin County Archives -A Thank you To Karl and Barbara at the IL State Archives

The Illinois State Archives site http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/archives.html provides background on the Archives, on IRAD and its holdings at each depository, on its on-line databases, and other research materials. The Archives was established in 1921 by Margaret Cross Norton, with the building erected in 1938. By law it is the depository of public records of Illinois state and local governmental agencies which possess permanent research value. These records are made available to the public, officials, and scholars at the Norton Building and at seven regional (IRAD) depositories located on state university campuses throughout Illinois. IRAD was begun in 1976 with a grant to the State Archives from the National Endowment for the Humanities. IRAD's local records include records of local governments, such as counties, townships, municipalities and school districts. The Archives provides access to them through a series of printed and electronic guides, and in-person, or by mail, telephone, FAX, and Internet database reference services. The Illinois State Archives operate under the direction of Jesse White, Secretary of State and State Archivist.

Such a system is only as good as its people. The Illinois State Archives has many excellent and knowledgeable employees, from its director on down. Two of them have been deeply involved in our records in Macoupin Co.: Karl R. Moore, Supervisor of the IRAD System, and Barbara Heflin of the same office, who insures the quality of all the on-line databases. They have been coordinating the filming by the Illinois State Archives of some of Macoupin's oldest records, including the Assessor tax records, the Collector tax records, and now the Chancery books, from the earliest about 1830, up to at least 1920, all of which are housed at the Macoupin County Archives. The tax films are now available at the Carlinville Public Library, the Macoupin County Historical Society and Museum in Carlinville, and the Staunton Public Library which houses records of the Macoupin County Genealogical Society. This guarantees that these records will last for decades, and safeguards them by duplication.

Karl and Barbara are not merely desk people in ivory towers, but actually have come to both the Macoupin Co. Archives and the Museum and loaded and unloaded dirty, dusty books in good weather and bad, in snow and rain, in 90 degree heat, and then get to do the same thing at the Archives in Springfield with each load of books. Karl has gladly made himself available to talk about archival preservation methods, microfilm versus CD, and many other related topics, to any group needing that information, including County officials and interested genealogists and family researchers. He and Barbara coordinate the filming of our records at the State Archives with the filming of many other series of records which by law are to be filmed. When the filming is done, the resulting films are checked, usually by Barbara, for correctness and completeness, before they come back to us in Carlinville. Karl also drives to the many other IRAD facilities for various reasons and is very knowledgeable about their holdings, their needs, and the filming of their records too. Obviously they have many other duties we know nothing about.

Because we haven't said it forcefully enough over the last 3 years or so, THANK YOU so very much, Karl and Barbara. We look forward to working with you for many years to come.





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