With good reason, hurricanes are both a familiar and forbidden subject in the state of Virginia. The Atlantic hurricane season is officially from 1 June to 30 November, with the season’s peak occurring between August-October. During the very active hurricane season of 1933, the Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane hit coastal Virginia on 23 August 1933, causing catastrophic damage.  The storm was first noticed when it was east of the Windward Islands.  By 18 August, the tropical storm was 900 miles east of Puerto Rico and within 150 miles of Bermuda, and on 21 August it became a hurricane.  On 23 August at 9:20 A.M., the storm changed track and the eye passed over Norfolk, Virginia, and moved north.  Some of the lowest pressures ever measured in Virginia occurred with this hurricane.  A second hurricane would hit the mid-Atlantic a few weeks later. 

The stricken area covered large parts of Norfolk, Princess Anne, Northampton, Accomack, Elizabeth City, York, Gloucester, Mathews, and Lancaster counties.  To a lesser extent, Northumberland, Richmond, and Westmoreland counties were also affected.  In all, the hurricane caused $27.2 million in damage and fewer than 18 fatalities in Virginia.  The 1933 hurricane season left a destructive path all the way into Pennsylvania and remained the worst series of storms on record in the area until Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

In January 1983, on the eve of the 50^th anniversary of the hurricane, the Library of Virginia became the recipient of the Mathews County Red Cross Records, 1933-1934, 1950-1970.  The bulk of the records, 1933-1934, relate to relief efforts after the Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane hit Mathews County. During the 1930s, the greatest burden of support and relief to devastated areas fell largely to one humanitarian organization –  the American Red Cross. The Mathews County Red Cross Chapter was organized 12 May 1917.  At the time of the hurricane in 1933, Reverend C.E. Otey was the local chairman and many of his files are found in the Mathews County collection. 

After the hurricane, immediate emergency relief was organized through local Red Cross chapters with assistance from trained disaster workers sent to the area by National Headquarters. The more permanent phase of relief work came with the rehabilitation program.  After the investigation of each family’s needs and with the approval of the local chapter committee, materials to rebuild homes and furniture and household goods were issued to those families who were without sufficient resources to meet these needs.  Given the already devastating economic situation created by the Great Depression, the larger part of the relief operation was met by the National Red Cross from its own fund.  As noted in the promotional pamphlet found in the collection, “an excellent spirit of cooperation prevailed.”  Public and private agencies—the state, county, and city governments, welfare departments, the American Legion, the Boy Scouts, the Colonial National Monument (now the Colonial National Historical Park), and various fraternal organizations and church groups—all came together during the crisis and made a difference.

The Mathews County Red Cross Records collection totals 2.8 cubic feet in seven legal-size boxes. Records include merchant accounts and reimbursements, dwelling repairs (approved and disapproved), committee meeting minutes, a storm log, correspondence, warehouse invoices, and dwelling and repair plans.  The majority of the collection consists of disaster registration and redistribution cards.  These records are arranged alphabetically by surname of relief recipient.  Information recorded in the disaster registration cards includes location of disaster relief operation; family surname; names and ages of family members; race; owner or renter of dwelling; pre-disaster address; current address; and items needed (clothing, food, shelter, transportation, medical care, etc.). Should the request have been deemed valid by the Red Cross representative, a disaster redistribution card was filed with the disaster registration card listing the quantity and type of relief items the family was given. A cursory examination of these records shows a disparity in the relief provided for white and African American families. White families tended to receive shelter, medical expenses, and continued clothing supplies that African Americans did not, but a more thorough research of the collection needs to be done to prove such discrimination occurred. 

Currently, the Mathews County Red Cross records are open for research and housed at the State Records Center. A debt of gratitude goes to Autumn Simpson, a former LVA intern and volunteer, who did a remarkable job processing and cataloging the entire collection.  For further comprehensive information on Virginia’s Hurricane Preparedness program visit the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

-Callie Freed, Local Records Archivist

Virginia’s historic records have always existed under the threat of floods, hurricanes, fire, and war. Sometimes the records were saved. Sometimes they were lost.

 When the Botetourt County courthouse was gutted by a fire on 15 December 1970 no one at the time could foresee that such a horrible loss would spur the creation of legislation five years later that created a uniform system for records management in Virginia. The Virginia Public Records Act, passed in 1975, set in motion an effort not only to manage all the state’s records but also to preserve and copy vital historic records contained in local courthouses.

Preservation and duplication efforts continue today with The Library of Virginia’s (LVA) records managers and archivists. The Circuit Court Records Program (CCRP), which began in 1991, continues to not only preserve, digitize, and microfilm historic records from around the state but also to reach out to circuit court clerks in each locality, offering them professional support and financial assistance in the form of grants. To date, the CCRP has funded nearly 1,000 projects worth more than $15 million to preserve records in the circuit court clerks’ offices. Nineteen years later, access to Virginia’s historic records has never been wider with more than 5 million chancery court images now available online. Clerks also have the option of sending historic record collections to the archives which is housed in the Library of Virginia building in Richmond and the state-of-the-art State Records Center in Henrico County. Both buildings provide modern protections and temperature- and humidity-controlled environments. More than 75,000 cubic feet of records from the state, local records, and private papers collections reside in the state’s archive as do nearly 350,000 microforms in a specially-designed vault.

 Fortunately the records stored in the Botetourt County courthouse vault survived, though with water damage as a result of the firefighting efforts. The Virginia Public Records Act follows the admonition of Thomas Jefferson who in 1791 wrote “…let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.”

  -Dale Dulaney, Local Records Archival Assistant