From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
Not a real old postcard, but fun and still available at Bristow’s. This one is postmarked 1987. The pen and ink drawing was done by artist Jim Collins. The note on the card says ” Hello—Stopped here and had two splendid chocolate sodas! Memories.” Even in a drawing, you can see some changes. Alas, the Coke sign is long gone (stolen), and the bench and awning on the 2nd Steet side are also just memories.
We have people coming into the library to use the original Brown Co. real estate transfer books, going back to 1818. When the county digitalized them, they needed to find a new home for the originals, so we opened our doors (and our shelves!) to these huge and heavy books. However, if you are searching at midnight, or moved away from the area, the digitalized copies are on a free and addictive website that we want to share with you. We also use the site quite a bit to find access to old books and some newspapers.
Here’s our most straightforward way to find the tax list archives. Go to archive.org, and in the search line type 1818-1899 real estate (leave the button in the search metadata spot) and the image of the first book will appear—click on the image and you will get the list of the files by year, choose your year of interest and have fun! Because the early years are hand-written, there is no searching by name, just have to go page by page just as if you were here at the library. In the years after the 1818, there is some organization by town and township which makes the search easier. Then, all the surnames are grouped together, i.e. all the A names are together within a town or township, but not in order within the As. (FYI, the other year groupings for search terms are 1900-1939 real estate, 1940-1979 real estate and lastly 1980-1999 real estate). This tool, while not the easiest to use, has helped people figure out who owned the property years and years ago, and can be helpful to figure out what year range a house was built when the property value starts listing a building.
