Searchers in Washington county will soon be able to view records dating back to the 1700’s thanks to an ambitious microfilm conversion project, spearheaded by Register of Deeds Ginger Jilton. The project, which began last fall, consists of the digital converting of 75 rolls of the county’s oldest microfilm which encompasses over 150 deed books. “The process of converting these images is very time consuming,” said Taylor Burgess, Director of Micro-media for BIS.

Other than the convenience of being able to search these images in-house and online, other factors also led to Jilton’s decision to pursue this project. “Having this film converted not only makes it more convenient for our searchers to access the images, but it will also provide the county with an additional offsite backup as well as eliminate the need for some costly maintenance contracts on some of our micro-film readers,” said Jilton. The converted images will be available for searchers on The Registry system and will be viewable online via Titlesearcher.com.