Records Room Road Trips: Fall 2024

Have I mentioned that this was going to be an unusually slow travel season for me? Yes, I have.

Prior to the opening of the annual Circuit Court Records Preservation (CCRP) program grant cycle each fall, CCRP consulting archivists (Tracy Harter and myself) spend our summers traveling across the Commonwealth of Virginia. In the past, in addition to numerous day trips (i.e., within a couple of hours of Richmond), I have spent as many as five weeks of overnight trips on the road visiting circuit court clerks’ offices in southwest Virginia and in the western Southside of the state. The purpose of most of these trips is to identify potential candidates for CCRP item conservation grants.

Because the CCRP grant funding is provided via a recordation fee for land transactions, and because real estate sales have been in something of a slump, the money for the grants has been trending lower and the localities have not been awarded the funding to conserve as many items as they have in the past. In recent years, as the amount of funding slowly decreased and the number of items that could be submitted declined, my backlog of examined items has gradually increased so much that some localities have enough condition reports in their examined queue that I will not need to travel there anytime soon. The amount of time needed and the number of items examined on each visit depends on a few factors, such as the condition of the records, what has already been conserved and what remains, the research value or uniqueness of the items remaining, and the like. Some items, such as volumes that have been cellulose acetate laminated, are easy to identify and to write up condition reports for and can be knocked out quickly. More challenging items are those that are not as easily identifiable and may take time to find, such as loose records. As a result, some localities have many items in the conservation queue, while other localities need to be returned to frequently (sometimes annually). It just depends. In any event, Tracy and I keep notes and lists of the number of condition reports (in the queue) for each locality, and that ultimately drives our summer travel seasons.

The second half of July, I planned the first of two trips to the central western part of the state to localities within proximity to Salem, where I spend the nights when I am in that region. With six places that I needed to visit, my travel was broken up into two, three-day overnight trips. On this first visit to the area, however, I would only be visiting two circuit court clerks’ offices, plus a day trip to a local historical society that holds a large collection of one of the locality’s records.

The initial extended travel days from Richmond usually mean that I only have a half day to do my work, so I always try to make that first stop the closest of the bunch, which in this case was the office of recently elected Pulaski County Circuit Court Clerk Spencer Rygas in Pulaski. Since taking office, the clerk and I had been communicating regarding some Pulaski County records that had been transferred to the Wilderness Road Regional Museum in Newbern in 1975. An unfortunate fact is that, with the turnover in administrations, sometimes incoming clerks are not aware of the whereabouts of some of their records, especially when the records are stored offsite. Lack of institutional knowledge combined with a lack of paper trail documentation can make knowing where public records are located challenging, if not impossible. In this instance, however, once the new clerk became aware of the records and the fact that regardless of where they reside, the circuit court clerk is ultimately the custodian of records, he felt that it was in his best interest to visit the facility where they are stored. As a result, we planned to meet with April Martin, the director of education at the Wilderness Road Regional Museum, on my second day there.

The first day of the trip went as planned. As usual, arriving at the clerk’s office at around 12:30 p.m., I only had a half a day to do my work (examining items as potential candidates for CCRP conservation grants). As mentioned, I return to these travel day localities frequently because I am never able to build up a backlog of items in the conservation queue. The good news with the Pulaski County circuit court clerk’s office, however, is that I always know what I will be examining when I get there: marriage records. The previous clerk had an ongoing project to conserve the marriage records, and the new clerk was happy to continue. However, in time, these will run out and I will need to identify other deserving items.

The next morning, I met the clerk at his office, and we traveled to the Wilderness Road Regional Museum in Newbern where we met April Martin for a tour of the facility. It is worth mentioning that the Pulaski County court records stored there were all arranged and housed in archival-quality containers in a secure, relatively climate-controlled facility. Included in the tour was a recently conserved, free Negro register, which she informed us was labeled as part 2, which led us to wonder what ever happened to part 1 (no one knows). She then gave us a detailed tour of the grounds of the museum, including the site of the original courthouse, the original clerk’s office, the jail, and an enclosed gallows that had been moved there from Giles County.

With the visit concluded and the clerk satisfied with the safety and condition of the records, we returned to the Pulaski County circuit court clerk’s office, where I continued my work examining and writing condition reports for eight items (four batches of marriage records 1924-1929, three land books circa 1880s-1890s, and Deed Book 12, 1888-1890).

On the third day of my Salem trip, I traveled to the office of Montgomery County Circuit Court Clerk Tiffany Couch in Christiansburg. The purpose of this visit was twofold and slightly out of the ordinary. First of all, I was to pick up two Montgomery County free Negro registers from the clerk’s office for temporary transfer to the Library of Virginia, where they will be digitized and the images mounted in the Virginia Untold project database. Additionally, while the clerk already had 13 items in the conservation queue, she had come across 20 white and colored 1904 voter registers that she was interested in conserving, which I ultimately examined and wrote up condition reports for. The visit was even more unusual because prior to heading to the clerk’s office, she contacted me to let me know that there had been a power outage and that the Montgomery County Courthouse would not be opening until noon, so another half-day visit. Expect the unexpected.

As can be a problem with land tax and property tax books, there are usually multiple voter registers for a locality with one for each precinct. And as with land and property tax books and their multiple magisterial districts, the problem becomes knowing if you have identified all the booklets for all of the voting precincts within the locality. The clerk had identified 20 of the 1904 version. The clerk had found these items after she moved the remainder of her older records from the basement “cage” to compact shelving in their secure archival storage area adjacent to the records room. We later learned that there are three more of these 1904 voter registers at the Library of Virginia (which will be transferred to the clerk’s office), but is that all of them? In the end I wrote up condition reports for the 20 voter registers and Land Book, 1845-1850.

The next morning, on my final day of this trip, I returned to the Montgomery County circuit court clerk’s office to pick up the free Negro registers for temporary transfer to the Library of Virginia.

I would be returning to Salem for another extended stay in a few weeks, but in the meantime, I lined up more day trips, such as an easy jaunt to the office of recently elected Chesterfield County Circuit Court Clerk Amanda Pohl. Again, visits to the Chesterfield County circuit court clerk’s office are routine and predictable in that the conservation always involves the same thing: disbound record books. As was mentioned in last year’s Records Room Road Trip blog, the volumes were disbound in the 1990s for scanning and now we are putting them back together. In the end, I wrote up condition reports for 19 disbound deed books (1889-1898).

It might be worth mentioning, however, the plight of Chesterfield County Deed Book 1, 1749-1753, which I examined and wrote up a condition report for in August 2022. The volume was cellulose acetate laminated, probably in the 1930s or 1940s (judging by the binding). The yellowing/browning of the paper suggests that the volume was likely not deacidified prior to lamination, which ultimately hastens the deterioration of the paper. Additionally, the volume also shows a large number of losses in the paper, which makes the removal of the lamination more challenging. When this volume was submitted for a CCRP item conservation grant in 2016, these issues (and probably some others) made it difficult to remove the lamination without causing further damage to the volume. When the conservation lab realized this, the laminated pages, which had been cut out at the binding, were attached to record paper formatted for a post binder. The volume was returned to the clerk’s office imaged but still laminated. Since then, we have hoped that conservation technology might catch up with the situation so that the laminate can be removed safely before it is too late. This year, the Chesterfield County circuit court clerk’s office has resubmitted this volume in the hopes that the conservation lab will have better luck removing the laminate from the county’s oldest deed book.

My role in the next day trip was more of an assistant to my colleague CCRP consulting archivist, Tracy Harter, as the visit was to one of her localities, the office of City of Richmond Circuit Court Clerk Edward Jewett, which is one block’s walk from the Library of Virginia. For this visit, she had been called by the clerk to examine some plat books and a few other items, and because it was such an easy field trip, I went along to assist her. I wrote up condition reports for Deed Book, 1861-1865 and five plat books, circa 1919-1959.

The next day trip for me was to the office of Lunenburg County Circuit Court Clerk Gordon Erby in Lunenburg. And while the clerk has been a steady participant in the grant process, this was my first visit to his office in the 8+ years that I have been a CCRP field archivist. This was odd because Tracy and I divide the state pretty much in half, with her localities in the upper portion and my localities in the lower portion of the state. However, Tracy had been assigned Lunenburg County, in Southside. (I think it was because I could not go on the initial visit and Tracy went for me and has been going ever since, or something like that.) In any event, eight years later, we made it right!

In this instance, outside of reading Tracy’s notes, I really didn’t know what to expect. My initial onsite survey of the records room indicated that the bulk of the deed books had been conserved in one way or another in the past (and some possibly over-treated). I was happy to see that most of the order books had not been tampered with, either by lamination or tape-stripping. Many had been rebound, but the bulk were good-looking volumes that would not need treatment. That said, I did find six that warranted conservation, four of which had been cellulose acetate laminated (two in 1989 and two in 1939!), and two that may have been the worst (possibly homemade) rebinds that I have ever seen. All six were good candidates and I wrote up condition reports for them.

Additionally, it was easy to see that several of the plat books needed conservation. In some instances, there was no longer any binding, in other instances the encapsulated pages had been torn from the posts, and some had sticky deteriorated and degrading plat sleeves (which is pretty easy to spot either visually or from the gooey feeling to the touch). In the end, I examined approximately 20 items, writing up condition reports for 13, which included the six order books, three plat books, three cellulose acetate laminated will books, and one disbound deed book.

My next blog installment will continue with a few more day trips, another visit to localities around Salem, and an excursion to Accomack County on the Eastern Shore.