I love genealogy, so it's no big surprise that one of the first projects I crossed off the list in our new Northfield History Collaborative grant was uploading Bridgewater Township's birth and death records.
There are two books to see: Book L covers 1871 to 1899, and Book M covers 1899 to 1907. Both books are fully transcribed, meaning they are searchable, and you can copy and paste the typed text. The books were always available to the public on request from Bridgewater Township (and more recently the Rice County Historical Society), but now you can view (and search!) them from anywhere on the planet whenever you like.
These particular books are of note for genealogists and local historians because they are the two earliest books of vital records kept by that jurisdiction (to my knowledge). At this time, a birth or a death probably wasn't registered at the county or state level - the township may have been the only place to record it, if it was reported to any jurisdiction at all.
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Read more about these books at the Northfield History Collaborative.
-- Ariel Emery Butler is project coordinator for the Northfield History Collaborative, a project of the Northfield Historical Society and 11 Northfield-area partner organizations.