Welcome to the County of Berks
Although I do not live in Berks County, PA, a large percentage of my ancestry is rooted there, and the city of Reading, the county seat, is only about 70-80 minutes from my house. My grandmother grew up there. Thus, I've become familiar with searching records there, and I have to say that this county is doing alot of great things in terms of making records accessible to their constituency, researchers alike, and the public at large. The county's Register of Wills has some great searchable indexes for birth, marriage, and death records. Although that office's actual records are not available online (yet), they make it very easy for one to do alot of prep time ahead of visiting their office in person, by giving you all of that index information- the dates, volumes, and page numbers right there online. That makes it incredibly easy to get right to finding the actual records you need once you are there in person (or just as easy to request them by mail). The Register of Wills even gives a bit of his own personal genealogy on his bio page!Deeds Online Galore!
But let's get back to houses, shall we? Berks County takes it to the next level over at the Recorder of Deeds office. The current Recorder, Fred Sheeler, has been leading his staff since 2008 in an incredible effort of records digitization. According to their website, essentially the entire collection of deeds recorded in the county since its founding in 1752 has been digitally scanned and is available for residents and researchers to access online. Although not all of the images are indexed by name and searchable as of yet, it appears to me that a great number are. The Recorder's office states that their goal is to have all of their documents back to 1752 indexed by name and searchable, making it even easier for researchers to find what they are looking for.(Update: Fred Sheeler provided this clarification to me regarding online searchability: "All the documents are searchable just not by the modern name search capability. All older documents that we have not fully indexed are still searchable by our online electronic version of our index books. When you are on the search site just choose Index Books as the search criteria, you enter the party’s last name and the first initial of their given name and all the index books will display. You can choose from the deed grantor and grantee indexes or the miscellaneous or mortgage indexes. They are actually better than a regular modern name search since the index books group similar sounding names together so if you had an ancestor with the name Snyder and it formerly was spelled as Snider you would still come across it."
Thanks Fred for the clarification: this is useful to know and sounds similar to the way I search for deeds in person at the computer station at Montgomery County, whereas Berks has it online. Although a fully indexed database is often easier to use for those unfamiliar with these record types, researchers should be familiar with searching records using index books as well, as it is not difficult and can yield persons of the same surname, who could possibly be related, or with similar spellings as Mr. Sheeler suggests.)
Also available are mortgage documents and even subdivision plans. Yes, I repeat, these document images are all online! If you live in Berks County, the process of chaining the title for your house history research could be complete within an hour or so without even going to the county offices. The images can be printed or saved for
Public Outreach
Sheeler is clearly interested in the public actually being able to use and understand these public records. The office now puts out a periodic e-newsletter to provide updates to Berks residents on its efforts to streamline the deed recording process, bringing it into the 21st century while maintaining the integrity and security required of this governmental recording process. Sheeler also makes himself available to give instructional lectures to local groups on how to access and use these databases. Last month, I received the latest newsletter and was extremely interested to learn of this 5-minute video, produced by the Recorder's office, discussing the evolution of deed recording in the county:I Digress (By Trying It Myself)
With all of this great information out there, although it did not benefit my personal house history directly, I had to try some of this out to enhance my personal genealogy research. I accessed the online database, and did a general search for my great-great-grandfather, Henry F. Snyder. There were 61 hits in the search for "Henry Snyder", 5 of which I could immediately tell were my ancestor. I knew because they were associated with property in Reading, where Henry lived, included his known middle initial "F", and also listed his wife, my great-great-grandmother Maggie. I went to one of the document images:Screenshot of a scanned document image for a property deed, involving my great-great grandparents Henry F. and Maggie Snyder as the grantors. |
Clip from the 1940 US Census schedule, showing Henry and Margaret Snyder. The address number "736" is listed in the first column, with the street name "Thorn St" listed in the margin. |
Google Maps image. The brick dwelling at 736 Thorn St appears to still exist, but the Street View car hasn't captured an image of it as of yet. |
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