Looking for ancestors in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana area? A new resource (actually a very old book) has just become available.

Written in faded ink on the tattered, yellowed pages of a birth log, is the history of a community about to be born, literally. The booklet, which contains recorded births from April 11, 1914, to March 1916 in the community of Central, north of Baton Rouge, has landed in the Special Collections department of the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, more than 100 years later. 

“This book is a microcosm of Central's history,” said archivist Melissa Eastin, head of Special Collections. “Each page not only tells the story of a birth, but it gives us clues into the lives of the families and what the Central community might have looked like in 1914.”

Postmaster H.K. Viers is listed as the registrar and Dr. John F. Stockwell attended the majority of the births, which occurred in Wards 5 and 10 in East Baton Rouge Parish. Stockwell was born in 1889 in Baker and returned to the area after getting his education. 

You can read more about it in an article by Bonny Van published in theadvocate web site at: https://tinyurl.com/bbcfzcdm.