A local librarian recently received an award that is the first of its kind in the state.
Jennifer Sanders-Tutt is the Local History Librarian with the St. Joseph Public Library. She was chosen as the first recipient of the Excellence in Genealogy and Local History Award and was presented with the award at the Missouri Library Association conference.
“It’s amazing… my co-worker said, ‘I’m going to nominate you,’ and I kind of put it in the back of my mind. I didn’t think I’d be the one to win it, especially in its first year,” Sanders-Tutt said. “I’m really excited about it. (It’s) very nice for our library and our community to be able to say that we’re the first ones to win this award in the whole state of Missouri.”
The Missouri Library Association’s Genealogy and Local History Committee of Interest sponsors the award. Sanders-Tutt said one of the things that stood out to the committee during the application process was her involvement with Founder’s Day and how she worked with the City of St. Joseph to recognize the date of July 26, 1843, as the official founding day of St. Joseph.
Sanders-Tutt said her position as local history librarian focuses on cultivating local history and helping the public with any local history research. She also has developed several programs and events including the monthly History Speaks program, genealogy programming and one of her favorites, the Oral History Project.
“That’s really rewarding to get to sit down with people from our community, especially some of our older community members that have a lot of history to share and listen to what their lives were like and what St. Joseph’s history was like,” Sanders-Tutt said. “One of my favorites, to this day, is my very first (interview) that I did and that was with a gentleman who was a World War II veteran. I think he was 97 at the time that I interviewed him and he had lived here all his life, he had gone to war, come back, raised a family and he was a fascinating individual.”
Sanders-Tutt said she hopes to continue expanding the Oral History Project to get more community involvement and possibly put together field kits for people to check out to record their own family histories.
For more information about local history and genealogy resources, contact the Downtown Library Reference Department at (816) 232-8151 or visit the St. Joseph Public Library’s website.