Genealogy Policy
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We at Bastrop Public Library are happy to assist you in your genealogy research. If you are out of town, or are unable to come in and use our genealogy collection yourself, we do offer some basic research services, provided generously through volunteer assistance. Keep in mind that time and staff constraints prevent us from assisting in detailed or large projects.

Please allow at least 2 weeks for us to respond to your request (during peak times, it can take twice that long, or more). You may send your requests via postal mail or by email. In order to reduce cost to the taxpayers of Bastrop, we will charge an initial $5 fee that covers postage and up to 20 photocopied pages – Money orders or cashier’s checks are preferred. Personal checks are honored after the check has cleared.

In submitting a request, please follow these essential guidelines:

  • Request only up to 3 obituary, birth notices, or article lookups (or any combination of these); we cannot look through "all of the Smiths" in our Cemetery Records.
    Vague requests such as "information about James MacNeil and family” will be returned
    with a referral to the The TXGenWeb Project at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txgenweb/.
  • Have a specific date for your obituary/birth notices, or article lookups (our newspapers are not indexed). Searching newspapers for obituaries will be done only if the full name and death date (month and year) are supplied.
  • Newspaper-related requests can only be searched in the Bastrop Advertiser, (keep in mind that our newspapers are NOT indexed, so a specific date is required).

Direct all genealogy and local history inquiries to: genealogy@bastroplibrary.org.

Please be sure to include your name, mailing address and telephone number.
If our volunteer researcher can find the information you requested, we must have an address to which to mail it. Please allow at least two weeks for a response.

Requests that do not follow these guidelines cannot be processed.

Further items regarding genealogical requests:

  • We do not have original records (birth/death/marriage records); for more information, see the Texas State Library & Archives Commission’s Frequently Asked Questions about Vital Statistics at http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/vitalfaq.html.
  • We do have limited census records, however, we do not have indices for all of them, so we may not be able to fulfill all census requests (and again, please no more than 3 names).
  • If you are requesting information on a particular local business, organization, or institution, or if you are seeking biographical information of persons, you may also want to contact the Bastrop County Museum at (512) 321-6177; Email at: bchs@onr.com
  • Please also keep in mind that federal copyright laws may prevent us from fulfilling a request (we cannot photocopy an entire book, or significant portions of the book,
    without permission from the author and/or publisher).
  • If you would like to view microfilm that we do not currently own, we generally can borrow it for patrons with borrowing privileges. Please complete an Interlibrary Loan form in our library, or consult the library in your area