The Dale Funeral Home was at one time the largest black-owned funeral home in Toledo, Ohio. Most African-Americans in Toledo will have some family connection to it. The funeral home has records available, all presently on paper. Thousands of records, written in ledgers, typed on index cards, and stored in paper files -- document the names, family ties, and biographical information of each person who has passed through the traditionally African-American funeral home since 1912.
Sheryl Riggs, managing director of the Dale-Riggs Funeral Home, is trying to make those records more widely available.
Together with the African American Legacy Project of Northwest Ohio -- an organization dedicated to education about the history and culture of African Americans in the area -- the funeral director hopes to raise enough money to create a computer database that would house all of the information in digital form.
You can read more in an article by Claudia Boyd-Barrett in the Toledo Blade at http://toledoblade.com/article/20110103/NEWS16/101020381/0/news09
