Projects of the Bay County Genealogical Society

About Our Projects
By charter, the Bay County Genealogical Society is dedicated to the preservation and distribution of genealogical and historical records related to Bay County, Florida, and surrounding areas.

Recently Completed Projects
Cemetery Index The Bay County Genealogical Society transcribed every tombstone in Bay County between about 1990 and 1995. The data were recorded in 38 separate files—one for each cemetery. Our Society merged all these files were into a single, alphabetized file and up-loaded to our Web site in November 2005. Containing about 21,502 inscriptions, ours is believed to be the first county society in Florida to do that.

Obituary Index Many hours of effort over a number of years by Bay County Library staff members in the Local History and Technical Services Department, some of whom were BCGS members, produced an index to all the death notices and obituaries reported in the Panama City News Herald between 1 July 1987 and 20 April 2006, plus a few additional scattered dates from earlier years. These data were integrated into an alphabetized list of approximately 25,655 names, and uploaded to he BCGS Web site in May 2007.

Marriage Index Several BCGS volunteers transcribed every marriage in the official Bay County Marriage Records for the periods 1913–1930, 1936–1940, and 1946–1955. Many of these data were printed previously in several volumes, each containing five years of records. In April 2007 these 9,500 records were merged into a single list, sorted alphabetically, and uploaded to our Web site. Additional transcriptions brought the total to 15,140 by March 2008.

Current Projects
BCGS has six major transcription projects under way at present:

Projects Being Considered
Births, Deaths, and Marriages from the Panama City Pilot 1917-1941 The Bay County Library has recently arranged for this valuable resource to be scanned and placed online. An index exists, but like all indexes derived from OCRed documents, it misses many important events and people. We would like to dreate a more complete index.

Cemetery Index Transcribe cemetery and/or funeral home records from about 1995 forward and integrate into our existing database to bring our index up to the present.

Obituary Index Transcribe death notices and obituaries reported in the Panama City News Herald from the first edition in 1935 to 1987 and integrate with our existing index to bring our index forward to the present.