Kermit Karns:   Kermit has made many contributions for researchers of Chase County History and Genealogy.    In 1999 Kermit returned to Imperial, Nebraska, after having lived there in the 1950's when he worked for the  Federal Aviation Administration at the airport, taking care of the electronic equipment.   In the early 1960's Kermit indexed  Chase County family history information on library catalogue cards, which included obituaries, marriages, births, and more, which he obtained from the Imperial Republican Newspaper.  The cards total over 3000, and are on file at the Imperial Library.    Other contributions he has made have included walking through  Chase County Cemeteries and indexing the grave sites and making the information available in the Chase County Historical Society Museum and the Imperial Public Library.  He also personally microfilmed marriage records at the Courthouse;   School records at Champion and the Courthouse; and records of several   Churches up to 1975.   Originals of the film are at the State Historical Society in Lincoln; copies are at the Imperial Library. He also donated two microfilm readers to the Library so that the films could be read. He is currently active in organizing, re-copying when needed, and listing the contents of the files at the Museum, and making that information available on this site.
     Chase County is only one area of genealogical interest for Kermit.   At one time, he served as editor of the Kansas City (MO) Genealogist which published some of the cemetery records for Chase County. He was also president of the   Heart of American Genealogical in Kansas City MO for a time.   They published the Kansas City Genealogist.   He was also founding president of the Missouri State Genealogical Association, and the American Family Records Association.
      At present, he is also involved in an extensive project of computerizing some 50,000 library catalog cards containing family groups for parts of North and South Dakota. This is all for the Public Library at Aberdeen SD. The file will contain about 6mb when finished. He is also winding down on a similar project for the North Dakota State Historical Society. This file contains over 13mb of data.