MOUNT VERNON — In honor of the 10th anniversary of the local Newspaper in Education program, and to celebrate Knox County’s bicentennial, Michelle Hartman, NIE coordinator, has written a mystery story called “History Thief.” Each chapter of the story takes readers to different parts of the county as the fourth-grade detectives follow clues to find a stolen piece of art.
To make sure the historical references are accurate, Hartman spent hours and hours at the library doing research into the county’s past. A major portion of that research was conducted in what is known as the genealogy room at the main branch of the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County.
The genealogy room is the unofficial domain of reference assistant Janet Wacker, whose personal interest in local history and genealogy matches her professional duties. She said the genealogy room primarily focuses on Knox County, although there are some Ohio histories and other county histories available. There are city directories dating back to the 1920s, Wacker said, as well as one directory from 1876. There is a county atlas listing all the townships back to 1871 and 1896. The library also owns a few county directories, some old phone books, cemetery records indexed by name and indexes of marriages, deaths and obituaries. “These are good for tracking relatives who may have lived in Knox County,” Wacker said.