Pam Cooper, a county historian said to be passionate about genealogy and who secured troves of historical data and tools for as many people as possible to discover their family histories and learn about the place they call home, died last week at age 74.

Before it was a $5.5 million industry with family histories and DNA profiles available as gifts and monthly subscriptions, genealogy, or learning about one’s ancestry and the creation of family trees were acts of individual detective work through historic records and newspaper clippings housed in court offices and public libraries.

By the end of her three-decade career, Pamela “Pam” Cooper was credited with having transformed what was an Indian River County library bookshelf corner in 1986 into what at the time of her retirement in 2016 was an over 33,000-volume archive center and genealogy department, considered one of the “top three small genealogy departments in the country.”

“She built that from basically nothing,” said Marlis Humphrey, president of the Florida State Genealogical Society.

You can read a lot more in an article by Corey Arwood, published in the tcpalm newspaper’s web site at: https://bit.ly/3Ro2BV0.