Records Room Road Trips: Summer 2024

Have I mentioned that this was going to be an unusually slow travel season for me? Until recently, my courthouse visits had been sporadic and few, especially when combined with other Circuit Court Records Preservation (CCRP) program-related trips, such as a visit to the Central Rappahannock Heritage Center and to the ECS Conservation labs in Greensboro, North Carolina, for our routine inspections of items sent there through CCRP conservation grants. Since my last installment, I only had two day trips to the circuit court clerks’ offices before I hit the road for my protracted stay in southwest Virginia.

As far as conservation of records goes, the City of Suffolk circuit court records situation is pretty straightforward. Since elected to office in 2003, City of Suffolk Circuit Court Clerk Randy Carter has been a regular participant in the CCRP item conservation grant process, having been awarded over $180,000 to preserve 48 individual volumes. Not surprisingly, by this time, the most dilapidated records in his collection have been conserved, and many of the volumes being examined now are potential rebind candidates. In these situations, I usually inspect the oldest deed books, will books, and order books, paying special attention to the binding structure. I look for broken or detached spines, loose sewing, and detached pages or signatures (a sheet of paper printed with four or more pages of a book).

In the past, volumes with simple issues such as these sometimes received full treatment, resulting in the pages being disbound, encapsulated in archival polyester sleeves, and bound in a new post binder. The newly encapsulated pages frequently resulted in the volumes returning to the clerk’s office in two parts, essentially adding another volume to their already overflowing records rooms.

Unfortunately, we suspect that sometimes this deconstruction of the original volumes was not warranted, but simply the easiest route for conservation labs, which may have lacked trained bookbinders or conservators. This is not to say that encapsulation was always unnecessary. If pages in a volume are extremely brittle, have an inordinate amount of tape repairs, or are already disbound, they are better suited for the full treatment as the most cost-effective conservation method. However, disbinding a volume should never be taken lightly and should only be performed when no other legitimate conservation options are practical. It is especially unfortunate if the original binding is lost during this process. On this visit, I examined approximately thirty volumes and wrote up condition reports for twelve, six of which will be rebound.

The trip to the office of Dinwiddie County Circuit Court Clerk Barrett Chappell was also fairly predictable. As I mentioned regarding Amelia and Nottoway counties in my last installment and with others before that, the Dinwiddie County clerk has had an ongoing project conserving marriage records, and that was what I focused on. As stated before, the good news with these types of projects is that you know what you are getting into (in general), and it removes a lot of the time-wasting guesswork. Additionally, making marriage records more accessible is of great interest to local genealogists and historians (everybody wins!).

I made my first week-long visit to southwest Virginia in July, working out of Abingdon. As I have mentioned in the past, I have developed a system for my extended stay visits to southwest Virginia, working out of the “hubs” of Danville (for Southside), Salem (for central west), and Abingdon (for southwest). On this trip my courthouse destinations were Bland, Carroll, Wythe, and Wise counties, all relatively close to Abingdon.

The office of Bland County Circuit Court Clerk Lisa Hall was the first one I visited on that initial travel Monday, on my way to Abingdon. Arriving around 1:00 p.m., those Monday travel days from Richmond mean less time in the records rooms, as much of my morning is spent getting there. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the number of good conservation candidates in the tiny records room is rapidly drying up. Much of what is left are a few deed books in need of minor repairs (i.e. rebinds), and the usually abused land and property tax books, which in Bland County are not in horrible shape, but still good candidates. Because the older land and property books are softbound and fairly slim, an effort is made to combine them into a few consecutive years so that the clerk can get the most bang for her buck with the grant award.

That system goes out the window, however, when one year cannot be found (in this case 1907). In the end though, seven items were added, including three deed books (rebinds) and three batches of land books.

On the second of this four-night stay in Abingdon, I traveled to the office of Carroll County Circuit Court Clerk Gerald Goad, in Hillsville. Few clerks have as much passion for the care and maintenance of their historical records as Gerald Goad. Many are aware of the infamous Hillsville Massacre — the 1912 Carroll County courtroom shootout.

However, many probably are not aware that the current clerk’s great-great uncle, Dexter Goad, was clerk of courts at the time and came off as something of a hero, firing at the gunman and chasing him into the street, even after being shot in the face. For Gerald Goad, when it comes to the preservation of the Carroll County circuit court records, it’s personal!

As a result of his passion for the records of Carroll County, Goad has taken a few extra steps with his preservation efforts, such as the establishment of a renovated, climate-controlled, secure archival storage area, staffed by dedicated volunteers who are led by Delilah Brady from the Carroll County Historical Society. Brady has organized the space by placing loose records in flat-files and storing them in archival-quality containers, with many of them digitized and made available online.

That said, the records room in Carroll County still contains several volumes in need of conservation, mostly deed books that would be suitable for rebinds and, in some instances, the full treatment (disbinding, encapsulation, and post-binding). However, prior to my arrival, the clerk and Delilah Brady had identified a few volumes that they felt might warrant conservation. It is always helpful when those who routinely interact with the records can pass along their recommendations because they will always know the collection better than I. This cuts down on the amount of time I need to examine the records. In the end, I wrote up condition reports for ten items.

One unusual item was the 534-page Court Order Book 1, 1842-1843, which is the oldest order book for Carroll County, established in 1842. The volume had obviously been conserved at some point in the recent past, but it contained no treatment report, which usually accompanies items that have been sent to a conservation lab. The volume was stored in the vault, in a custom-made box, but there was an excessive amount of foxing on the pages, as well as a strong moldy/mildew stench that was a little too overpowering for comfort, which was why the clerk had concerns about it. There was a small amount of inactive mold on the first couple of pages, but nothing afterwards.

I recommended that the clerk not house the book in the slipcase in the hopes that it might air out and wrote up a condition report, but I will need to consult with the Library of Virginia’s professional conservator on how to proceed with it.

On the third morning, I traveled from Abingdon to Wytheville to visit the office of Wythe County Circuit Court Clerk Jeremiah “Moe” Musser. With an inordinate amount of tape-stripped volumes, the course of action in this records room was predictable. I did, however, attempt to diversify the conservation treatments as there are other items in need. For example, with its solid text block and much of the original boards and binding still intact, the 710-page Superior Court of Chancery Records, Pleas, Volume 4, 1821-1826, was a good candidate for a restoration rebind, which would retain as much of the original suede leather components as possible. Another conservation issue that we sometimes see is when a volume was disbound in the past, and while keeping the signatures intact, small slits were cut in the signature folds.

Then plastic post-hole tabs were added so that the book could be rebound in a post binder. We are not quite certain why this was considered favorable, as the signatures remained intact, but it was possibly thought to provide easier photocopying by making the signatures easier to remove from the post binder. The main problem with these plastic post-hole tabs is that they eventually break, and the signatures become detached. In any event, because the signatures themselves are still intact, these volumes can usually be rebound with the same traditional sewn binding that it had before the post-hole tabs were added. A brief survey identified at least twelve deed books that had been converted to this post-hole tab system. In all, I examined around 44 volumes, writing up condition reports for twenty, twelve of which were tape-stripped.

On the final day of this southwest Virginia junket, I traveled to the office of newly elected Wise County Circuit Court Clerk Dezarah Hall. The Wise County circuit court clerk’s office is unique for several reasons, one of which is that it is located on multiple floors of the Wise County Courthouse. The actual circuit court clerk’s office is located on parts of the first and second floors, with what might be termed an annex in the basement for archival storage. On past visits I have scoured this lower-level area, referred to as the “chicken coop” by the staff, so I know there is nothing left for conservation in there. As a result, all my work is in their southwestern-themed second floor records room.

When I say, “southwestern-themed,” I don’t mean southwest Virginia, where Wise County is located, but the southwestern United States, like Arizona and New Mexico! However, when I get there, I know exactly what I will be looking for: broken post binders. That’s it, because there is nothing else left to conserve. This is truly a situation where the locality has run out of items for conservation. Replacing post binders is important, but it might not be considered a genuine conservation concern so much as a hardware issue. Working through the deed books in the records room, I have been identifying all the malfunctioning post binders and writing up condition reports for their replacement, including several pointed out by the clerk which I will make a priority. After examining around thirty volumes, I wrote up condition reports for twenty.