Perry County Public Library Offers Genealogy, Local History Resources for Researchers

The Perry County Public Library's Genealogy Department in Tell City holds one of southern Indiana's most accessible collections of local records, and a fast-growing digital archive has made it reachable from anywhere in the world, not just from the stacks on Tell Street.

A Library Built on Consolidation and Community

Perry County is a community rich in history and heritage, established in 1814 and named after Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, hero of the War of 1812. The county seat is Tell City, a town that has seen growth and change across the centuries. The library system that serves it today is itself a product of consolidation: in partnership with Advantage Archives, the Perry County Indiana Public Library launched its Community History Archive, a digital collection that brings the county's rich history to life. Before that, the institutional groundwork was laid when the Tell City-Perry County Public Library merged with the Cannelton Library District in 2012, expanding both its reach and its services across the county.

The library's mission runs well beyond genealogy. It has a long-standing tradition of serving Perry County residents with educational, informational, and recreational materials, and through its branches offers access to books, magazines, digital resources, and special programs for children and adults alike. Its Tell City branch is located at 2328 Tell Street, and a Cannelton branch operates at 210 S. 8th St. in Cannelton. Facilities at both locations include computer labs, meeting rooms, and dedicated spaces for children and for genealogy research.

Membership in the Indiana State Library consortium of Evergreen Indiana gives every cardholder access to books and materials from more than 100 libraries across Indiana, a significant amplifier for anyone whose research leads beyond Perry County's own holdings.

Tammy Harrington and the Genealogy Department

The clearest single entry point into the library's genealogy resources is staff genealogist Tammy Harrington. The library's genealogy page identifies her as the genealogist-on-staff, available to assist with questions and to share her extensive experience in genealogy research and local history. Researchers can reach the department through a Genealogy Research Request Form on the library's website, through the library's Facebook Genealogy Group, or by emailing the department directly. (The library's website lists a contact email for the department; call the library at 812-547-2661 to confirm the current best contact method.)

The department's invitation is open and direct: "We invite you to visit our Genealogy Department and explore our materials to uncover your family history."

The Perry County Newspaper and Yearbook Digital Archive

The most significant development in the library's recent history is the launch of its keyword-searchable Perry County Newspaper and Yearbook Digital Archive. The Perry County Archive currently contains 30 titles and over 100,000 images. The archive also draws 6,500 to 7,000 searches each month, a figure that reflects genuine demand from researchers working locally and at a distance.

The archive covers Perry County newspapers from the late 1800s through 1977, and yearbooks through 2015. Accessible online, it offers a collection of historical documents, yearbooks, newspapers, and more, with materials that date back to the early days of Perry County, providing an invaluable resource for researchers, historians, and anyone interested in exploring the past.

Three high schools are specifically represented in the yearbook collection: Cannelton High School, Tell City High School, and Troy High School. For anyone who graduated from one of those schools, or who is tracing a family member who did, the archive offers a direct path back into classroom and campus life decades removed.

The practical features make it genuinely fast to use. Resources in the archive are keyword searchable, so information that previously took months to find now takes minutes. Users can search, crop, download, create PDFs, and export as JPGs. As the library puts it: "Search, crop, download, create PDFs, JPGs; the options are endless." The archive is free and available to anyone, anywhere, with no library card required to access it.

Library Director Nathan Jochum worked with Advantage Archives to provide the community free access to their local history. "Advantage Archives was one of the easiest companies I've worked with," Jochum said, "and this wasn't my first newspaper digitization project."

The archive was built with community financial support. Grants and gifts from the Friends of the Perry County Public Library, the Perry County Community Foundation, and the Tell City Historical Society made the database and the digitization project possible. The library has also indicated the archive is not finished: more documents, records, and other relevant items will be added in the coming months and years.

The Full Research Resource List

Beyond the digital archive, the Genealogy Department maintains a robust set of databases and tools. Some are free to all; others require a library barcode or library card. Here is what the library currently lists:

• Perry County Newspaper and Yearbook Digital Archive – free, no card required, available to anyone online
• Obituary Database – searchable online
• Heritage Quest – library barcode required
• Catholic News Archives and Catholic Archdiocese records
• Top Internet Genealogy Sites – curated links
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers
• Indiana Marriages 1811-2007 – provided courtesy of the Indiana Genealogical Society and FamilySearch
• Indiana Marriages 1958-2018
• Indiana Marriages Through 1850
• FamilySearch: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
• Fold3 by Ancestry – library card required
• Newspapers.com by Ancestry – library card required

For resources flagged as requiring a library barcode or library card, contact the library directly to confirm whether remote access is available or whether in-branch use is required. The library serves a population of roughly 19,000 Perry County residents, and staff can walk researchers through which tools are accessible from home and which require an on-site visit.

A Regional Hub for Family History Research

The Tell City-Perry County Public Library is recognized as a FamilySearch affiliate library, which gives its genealogy researchers access to most FamilySearch center-only databases. That designation, combined with the Advantage Archives partnership, the Evergreen Indiana consortium membership, and Tammy Harrington's on-staff expertise, positions Perry County's library as one of the more fully equipped genealogy hubs in southern Indiana.

A book documenting Perry County's first families is also available to the public as a resource in the Genealogy Department of the Perry County Library in Tell City, an example of the kind of locally produced reference material the department holds that does not appear in any national database.

Whether the research goal is a great-grandparent's obituary, a land record from the county's early settlement years, or a class photo from Cannelton High School's 1962 yearbook, the Perry County Public Library has built the infrastructure to make that search faster and more productive than at any previous point in its history. The digital archive alone has already logged tens of thousands of searches, and it is still growing.