At a recent monthly meeting of TCGHS it was pointed out that there are a lot of people who don’t know anything about the Society or the many resources we have available. For over forty years, TCGHS has worked to preserve the history of Tate County and its citizens and provide a library full of resources to help those who wish to research their family history.
While we don’t have material on every county or every state we have accumulated thousands of books on a large majority of the states. Our focus is not just on Mississippi and Tate County. We have one or more books on 66 of the 82 counties in Mississippi. We have one or more books on 32 of the 50 states. We don’t have books on every county in every state.
We have almost 400 books that provide information on a specific surname (i. e., Allen, Bailey, Boling, Crockett, Freeman, Meriwether, Moore, Tate, Ward and more). The information included in these books varies from detailed family histories to Family Group Sheets on a certain line.
We have census indexes for a number of states and for Mississippi through 1870. There is a section that holds books that tell you how to research your ancestor not only in America, but Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany to name a few.
We have books on the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam wars.
We have over 700 reels of microfilm on subjects like deeds, marriage records, census records, local newspapers for Tate and a few of the surrounding counties.
Family details on specific surnames have been submitted to TCGHS and are stored in 4 five drawer file cabinets alphabetically by surname. We welcome family data submissions such as birth, marriage, military and death as well as Family Group Sheets.
All of these resources are available at no charge to researchers and can be accessed on Thursday and Friday when the library opens at 10 a.m. We are closed the Thursday and Friday before New Year’s, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, but appointments can be made on those Thursdays or Fridays except Thanksgiving and Christmas. If the holiday othere falls on the Thursday or Friday, then we can’t set up appointments.
The library is operated by volunteer members who are experienced in assisting researchers with the resources of the library. Most librarians have decades of experience in tracking down ancestors.
Now you know what’s there. But none of it will do you any good if you don’t come by the library and use those resources. You can try collecting your data from the internet, but no one site will have added all the resources we have to their collection. And we continually add new information. In the last two years we have added data on over 4000 black births in Tate County between 1941-1979. We have obituaries from the Tate Record (Democrat) for every year from 1990 to 2024. We are currently working on collecting information on Black Marriages from the early 1900’s. Another project is burials by Pate-Jones Funeral Home.
Now that you have an understanding of what we have available, let me remind you that everyone who works there is a volunteer. Memberships, donations and the sale of books we have compiled are our only source of monetary support. There are over 150 books available for purchase by individuals and other libraries and societies. Our membership is open to anyone at $20.00 for a single membership and $25.00 for family (4 adults) membership and organizations/businesses $50.00 for a year. And our members don’t all live in Tate County. Some are in other states.
There is so much more I could share with you about Tate County Genealogical & Historical Society, Inc. and the library and resources we maintain. We invite you to visit and become acquainted with the library. We invite you to support us through membership and donations to keep the work moving forward.
At our monthly meetings on the second Thursday of each month at 11 am, we present short programs on ways to search for your ancestors, how you can use these resources as well as those available on the internet to document the lives of those ancestors.
The November 13th meeting will be followed by a presentation on the Agricultural High School and its transition to a community college, please join us at 11 am. You may send me your email address to tonysharpe49@outlook.com and if you’d like to be notified on the subject each month.
You can always follow us on our Facebook page. There are two pages, and the second page has more information. New information is posted regularly.
We invite you to visit the library located in the Crockett Building, 107 Court Street (second floor), to make use of the resources. We are open on THURSDAY and FRIDAY (except prior to a holiday) from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (please call if you’ll arrive after 2 p.m.). You may contact us at tatehistory@hotmail.com or call 662-366-0125 and leave a message on voice mail with brief details of your request and we will answer.
