Coroners’ records are an invaluable source of information for genealogists. Now we read that the Marin County, California Coroners’ records are being transferred to the public library, where plans are underway to create a searchable database.
Since 1850, Marin’s coroners have documented thousands of death investigations throughout the county — pistol shootings,
drownings, railroad accidents, the occasional poisoning. One man’s demise, in Tomales in 1859, was attributed to “bad whisky.”
With the independent coroner’s office passing into extinction this weekend, the files on more than 89,000 coroners’ cases – many handwritten in pen and ink on parchment — have been transferred to the county library’s Anne T. Kent California Room, a rich repository of local historical documents, and the nonprofit Marin County Genealogical Society.
Laurie Thompson, the California Room’s librarian, is embarking on a project to create a searchable database of the vast coroners’ archives, with help from Genealogical Society volunteers.
Read the full article by Gary Klien in the January 1, 2011 edition of the Marin Independent Journal.
Hopefully, they will allow FamilySearch to either digitize or microfilm these records. If something happens to the County Library, there will be no second copy to fall back on.