Linn Genealogical Society
Volunteer Projects!

Volunteers Welcome

There are always tasks available for new volunteers to work with the projects described on this page. Most volunteers only spend a couple of hours a week on a project. If you have an interest in any of these projects, please send a message to the LGS Vice-President at lcgs-webmaster@hotmail.com. You do not need to be a member of the Linn Genealogical Society to volunteer.

The Linn Genealogical Society has many projects to preserve, organize, and publish information of historical and genealogical interest for Linn County. Volunteers commit their time and skills to make our heritage available to other researchers and future generations. New volunteers are always welcome to support the following on-going projects:

1890 U.S. Census Reconstruction

Several area genealogical societies have joined together to reconstruct the destroyed 1890 Federal Census for Linn County, Oregon. The project goal is to compile a list of residents who were in the county in 1890. A wide range of existing sources, such as tax lists, town directories, deeds, and newspaper articles, are being used to compile the list.

Cemetery Survey and Indexing

Society volunteers survey, preserve and index Linn County cemeteries.

Obituary Publications

Volunteers have assembled and printed into book form over 35 volumes of Linn County obituaries. This project is on-going and is a wonderful research tool that will be enjoy by researchers for many years.

Democrat-Herald Obituary Index

Oregon Donation Land Claim Series

Society members have contributed and aided in the compiling Oregon Trail families who reached the Oregon Territory and settled on donation land claims in Linn County. When complete, the series will consist of about 40 volumes and include approximately 45,000 names.

Digitizing Early Linn County Newspapers

The Linn Genealogical Society received a grant from Trust Management Services in 2004 to start digitizing all Linn County newspapers. Our goal is to digitize all of the past and current Linn County newspapers and create an index. Currently, there are 57 DVDs with over 100,000 pages scanned from microfilmed editions that represent 26 newspapers from the mid-1800s to approximately 1930. Some later editions are also scanned (see the list below). Plans are being developed to digitize additional issues into the mid-1900s.

The DVDs are available for browsing on the computers at the LGS Library. Eight of the DVDs have been cataloged to identify issue dates and the image numbers where issues can be found. Volunteers are needed to catalog the remaining DVDs.

The next and largest phase of the project is to create a surname index from the issues. The Society plans to begin the indexing phase in the Spring of 2006. If you would like to volunteer to help index the DVDs, please contact a Society board member.

List of Digitized Newspapers