About the Heritage Center

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The Dublin-Laurens Heritage Center strives to collect, preserve, and make accessible genealogical and historical information that is relevant to residents of the 5-county Oconee Regional Library System, including Laurens, Johnson, Washington, Treutlen and Glascock counties.  An emphasis is placed on Georgia and those counties that surrounding our service area. However, sources from other Georgia counties and surrounding states are also included in our collection.

 
 

Original Laurens County, GA 19th Century Documents Collection

The Laurens County Library now provides access to a collection of original Laurens County historic records from the 19th Century. This collection of loose, original records were discovered in Lauren County Courthouse by Mr. Allen Thomas during his tenure as Clerk of Court. He then spent the past 12 years indexing and abstracting these records.

***Tips for Searching on a Laptop or Desktop***

Option 1.

Press Ctrl + F to search the entire document, navigate up and down between search results, and see a count of the total number of occurrences of your search term.

Option 2.

This option allows you to limit your search to specific column.

  1. Select the column you want to search.

  2. In the menu, click Edit —> Find and replace. (Or press Ctrl +H)

  3. Enter your search term.

  4. Click Find.

  5. Continue clicking Find to jump to the next result.

  6. When you are done searching, click Done.

To request more information about the records or how to search the index, please email us at heritage@ocrl.org or call 478-272-5710.


Allen Thomas Oral History Collection

We are excited to announce the availability of 20 audio recordings reflecting the personal memories of interviewees and the development of Laurens County in the early to mid-20th Century. The majority of the recordings were recorded in the 1970s by Mr. Allen Thomas. The library is grateful to Mr. Thomas for donating this collection to the library. Thanks to a Digitization Summer Internship grant from the Georgia Public Library Service, many of the recordings can now be found online through the Digital Library of Georgia website.

To learn more about the collection: georgialibraries.org/laurens-county-history

To learn more about the intership: georgialibraries.org/intern-history


Historic Teacher’s Monthly Reports

In early 2018 the Laurens County Library received a $5000 grant from the Digital Library of Georgia to digitize, preserve, and share online hundreds of teacher monthly reports from African-American schools in Laurens County during the 1930s. These records are now available online. Fifty-eight schools are included in this collection! (Click here to read the full press release.)

Teacher's Monthly Reports Collection

See the full collection on the Digital Library of Georgia website:

https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/zhe_tmr

Help us to find your school!

Please help us to learn more about these schools and the many other schools that have existed in Laurens County so that the library can preserve and share this information with generations to come. If you have information to share, please let us know using the contact button at the bottom of this page.

We have more old school records to organize, digitize, and make accessible online. If you would like to support this project with either your volunteer time or financial support, please let us know using the contact button at the bottom of this page.


Online Resources