What's Happening in Doylestown, PA…

Currently, looking up a will or marriage license in Bucks County at the Register of Wills Office, located in Doylestown, must be done by hand. Many of the oldest records are in a fragile state and difficult to decipher, but plans are in the works to preserve these records and make them available via a searchable directory.

Don Petrille, Register of Wills, has made arrangement for the creation of an online database that will include all the wills and marriage licenses recorded prior to 1932. The job was contracted to a Cumberland County firm, IMR Limited. Records processed after 1932 could be included in later phases of the project.

This project will allow some fascinating information to be preserved for future generations, as well as enabling the public to research their ancestry. For instance, one record contained inventories of assets and debts of John Van Artsdale who, after his death in 1891, owed $7.10 for coal, $1.90 for meat and another $1.90 to the baker.

Deteriorating paper and fading ink have caused some details of the day-to-day lives of our ancestors to be lost. For the more recently printed documents, however, the durable paper and longer lasting ink that Print companies produce guarantee that the future generations will have plenty of material to sort through.

The whole scanning process could be as long as three or four years, but some records could be available online this winter.Get a Free Quote for Print