The Brown County Genealogy Society has just completed its 40 years in existence.
The society began at a homemade ice cream stand during a street fair in Georgetown in 1976.
Founding members included Dorothy Helton, Pat Donaldson, Richard Pride, L’Vera Seipelt and Aileen Whitt.
Through the years their library has grown to contain thousands of books and files and continues to draw researchers from all over the United States.
According to president  Donna Skinner, documenting the history of most of the families in Brown County has been going on since the early 1800’s.
This year alone almost 400 researchers came to Brown County to search for their roots. Some coming from as far away as California, Washington St. Oregon, and Florida.
One of its proudest accomplishments and largest undertaking was the salvaging of the court records. The summer before the Georgetown Court House burned, the society was offered the old court records to add to their library. It turned out it was too hot to work in the bell tower and there were too many wasps.
So the records were bagged up with plans to return in the fall. The records were piled in the middle of the floor under the bell. When the structure burned, the bell ended up in the basement, taking the records with it, thus saving them.
At the societies “Fall Family Heritage Fest, held in October they were fortunate to have four of the founding members in attendance, Dorothy, L’Vera, Aileen and Richard. The ladies were presented with roses, and all were honored for all their hard work.
The society is continuing its efforts to improve and update and replacing the old file cabinets with new lateral file cabinets and a new desk.
The improvements will cost about $3,000 and efforts continue to raise the money.
The society will hold a Bakeless Bake Sale. Instead of baking and buying cakes, pies and cookies, the Society is asking that anyone interested, to simply send what you would have spent on these items to the Brown County Genealogy Society, P.O. Box 83, Georgetown Ohio, 45121 or call Donna at (937) 444-4188.
The Genealogy Library and History Museum is open on Thursdays and Saturdays from noon until 5 p.m.