Richardson Funeral Home, Inc, Amite Donated a Volume of Funeral Books for Preservation

Funeral Records

The secretary for Richardson Funeral Home, Inc., Amite contacted Nurturing Our Roots Media regarding a volume of books that we might be interested in for genealogy research. She explained exactly what was in the books, and Dr. Antoinette Harrell assured her that she would be there in thirty minutes to examine them. 1996 to 2012 is the start and end date of the volume.

The books contain funeral records as well as indexes. Among the information researchers can find are the deceased's name, race, date of birth, date of death, occupation, and parents' names. Furthermore, it indicates whether the mothermaiden name, the funeral date, interment information, whether she was married, and the information's name. 

The books will be part of the Richardson Funeral Home Collection at the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies.  Parallelto the donation of books, 590 funeral programs will be added to the collection. EBPL Special Collections Department is digitizing the funeral programs and returning the originals to Dr. Antoinette Harrell at the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies. The Richardson Funeral Home is the first funeral home in the Louisiana Florida Parishes to preserve such records.

http://www.southeastern.edu/acad_research/programs/csls/historical_collections/archival_collections/r_s/richardson_funeral_home/index.html

More African American Funeral Programs to Be Digitized at the EBPL Special Collections Department

Patsy  Johnson

I've had a busy week of preserving African Americans funeral programs at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library Special Collections Department and conducting peonage research in the Mississippi Delta  made this week one of my busiest. Not to mention the many meetings I had scheduled. One of my meetings this week was with Patsy  Johnson concerning her collection of funeral and church programs. 

There are over 100 African American funeral programs in her collection from several South East Louisiana parishes: Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, St. Helena, East Feliciana, and Washington Parishes. A large number of the funeral programs were composed of members of her family, friends, and church family. Having thumbed through her collection, I made a recommendation to her about preserving her collection. In our conversation, I explained how important it is for her collection to be digitized in order to be preserved, and how I have partnership with the EBPL Special Collection Department to assist with the preservation of such collections. 

Patsy made use of this opportunity to ensure long term preservation to digitization. It was encouraging to know she understood how these funeral and church programs can be extremely valuable to the study of local history and genealogy research. I discussed with her how disappointed she would be if a natural disaster or other catastrophic event took place that could cause her collection to be damaged or destroyed. It is for reason like this, that we must consider alternative approaches to preserving our rich collections. 

Our meeting concluded with a plan of action for preserving her collection and making it accessible to other researcher through online digitization at the EBPL Special Collections Department. It is expected that the process will be completed within three months.