Individuals today wishing to conduct research using Rockingham County court records may encounter a few stumbling blocks. Due to two major events in the locality’s history, Rockingham County is identified as one of Virginia’s Lost Record localities. The first loss of Rockingham records occurred in 1787 when a courthouse fire destroyed primarily wills and estate records. A second and even more devastating loss came during the Civil War.

In June 1864, with the threat of Union troops advancing into the valley, concerned citizens of the county wanted court records (mostly volumes) removed from the courthouse so that the records could not be destroyed. A judge granted permission for these records to be moved to a safer place east of the Blue Ridge.  A teamster and wagon were hired to remove the records, but the wagon was left on the Port Republic-Forge road after a rim was lost and a tire came off. During this delay, Union troops spied the wagon and partially destroyed the records by setting fire to it.  The mother of a Confederate soldier extinguished the fire by carrying water and smothering the fire with green hay just cut from a nearby field.  She retrieved what was left of the records and took them to her home for safekeeping.  The records remained at her home for quite some time, and because the records were not carefully guarded, individuals came and took records related to themselves or their families.  Eventually, what records remained were returned to the courthouse; however, many order books, deed books, will books and fiduciary books were lost or severely damaged by the fire. 

In 2005, a Library of Virginia researcher made a startling discovery—he came across a box of miscellaneous loose and bound documents.  It so happened that this box contained burnt fragments of Rockingham County’s original wills and administrations (including estate inventories and guardians’ accounts) saved from that wagon fire in 1864. The history behind how the Library of Virginia came to acquire these records is found in the locality accession records. The files for Rockingham County date from 1864 to 2010 and offer two possibilities. The first and best possibility is that the records came from Duke University which returned 18,000 items and 121 volumes to the LVA on 22 June 1951 (accession 23707).  The second possibility (accession 25144) is that the records were purchased as part of 1,500 items from the Chesapeake Book Company on 1 April 1960.

Because of the extensive damage to the perimeter of many of the pages and to prevent further loss of valuable information, the more fragile items were sent to the Library’s in-house conservation lab. Pages were encapsulated and returned for the difficult task of historical reconstruction. As a result of the fire damage, pagination and recorded dates were effectively removed. The time consuming task of reconstruction was handed over to one of Local Records Services’ most experienced archivists, Louise Jones. She devised an elaborate scheme for painstakingly researching and reconstructing the original volumes for microfilm purposes.  Her work encompassed various steps to organize the items into will books.  The first step involved taking notes from county order books to determine which documents were recorded on which dates. For pages burnt on all four edges, she determined which side of the page was the spine side.  Next, she looked at the page to see if she could find the name of the deceased and the date the document was recorded.  For pages without dates or names of the deceased, she denoted the type of document and then looked for names and dates within the documents. If the document was an estate sale, she noted the names of the purchasers and compared the names to the list of purchasers in other estate sales. Comparing unique items sold with items listed in inventories helped determine the name of the deceased. For her final step, she compared handwriting, the darkness or lightness of the ink, page size, and the color of the paper or water stains to determine where the page belonged in the will book.

Nine volumes were painstakingly reconstructed dating from 1803 to 1862. Once reconstructed, the original volumes were microfilmed in-house by the staff of OCLC Preservation Service Center (now Backstage Library Works). The nine microfilm reels generated were made available to the public in 2005.  The volumes were then retired to the State Records Center because of their fragile nature.

The Rockingham County Wills and Administrations, 1803-1862 (Microfilm Reels 667-675), are available for research at the Library of Virginia and the Rockingham County Circuit Clerk’s Office. Additional Rockingham County court records can be found in the Lost Records Localities Digital Collection. More information on the digital collection can be found in this previous blog post.

-Callie Lou Freed, Local Records Archivist

While watching the February 2012 episode of NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? featuring actor and Petersburg native Blair Underwood investigating his family history, Library of Virginia staff could not help but notice that one of the original volumes displayed on the show was not in great shape.  The Amherst County Register of Free Negroes, 1822-1864, was used on the show to prove that one of Underwood’s ancestors had been a free person prior to the Civil War.  The front and back covers of the volume had become detached from the spine, pages were loose, and overall it did not look like the book could withstand much handling without sustaining further damage to its fragile pages.  This led to a reevaluation of the existing conservation priority for the 30 free Negro registers in the Library’s holdings.  Previously it was thought that since all of the free Negro registers were microfilmed, the original volumes would not be handled by the public any longer, thus conservation money would be better spent on other items.  However, the resurgence of interest in African American genealogy, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War and related issues, and interest in the registers for display in exhibits clearly indicated that a change was necessary.  A conservation inventory was done for all of the volumes and the ones that require treatment will receive it over time and as funds allow.

So what is a free Negro register and why do they exist?  In 1803 the Virginia General Assembly passed an act that required every free Negro or mulatto to be registered and numbered in a book to be kept by the county clerk. The register listed the age, name, color, stature, marks or scars, and in what court the person was emancipated or whether the person was born free. A free person was required to carry a copy of this register on them in order to prove their free status.  It was a criminal offense to not be registered, and a free person could be sold into slavery if they were unable to produce sufficient proof of their status.  Enforcement of these laws was done locally and could be inconsistent.  Times of great societal fear about a locality’s black population would often result in an increase in both registrations and prosecutions for being unregistered—for example, following Nat Turner’s uprising.  The free Negro registers were thus both instruments of control over the free black population of the state but also a safeguard of an individual’s free status should it ever be challenged.  The registers provide wonderful physical descriptions of free people that give the researcher a real idea of what someone looked like, information often hard to come by for other groups of the pre-Civil War era.  They are extremely important records for genealogists and have been used by historians for a variety of avenues of inquiry.

The first four volumes chosen for conservation were completed and returned to the Library of Virginia from Etherington Conservation Services in March 2013.  Included among them is the Amherst County register from Who Do You Think You Are?  The pages have been cleaned, mended, and deacidified.  The original boards of the cover have been retained because they were still in good shape although they got a restorative touch-up with watercolor and pencil.  The old leather bindings have been replaced with new leather.  The other volumes are three registers from Amelia County that date from 1804-1835, 1835-1855, and 1855-1865.  These registers all had broken bindings, loose or completely separated covers, and loose pages.  As the pictures show, the conservators completely replaced all of the covers and bindings on the Amelia registers.  The new bindings and board cover patterns were matched as closely as possible to the originals.  All of the pages of the volumes have been cleaned, mended, deacidified, and resewn into their new bindings.  The Amherst and Amelia free Negro registers are now ready for their Hollywood close-ups!  These registers still will not be available to the general researcher since copies exist on microfilm, but their conservation will ensure that these important volumes are preserved for future generations, and, when they are needed for a special display purpose, that they are in a physical state to withstand such handling and exhibition.

Conservation of archival records, maps, and books is expensive and takes time to do properly.  Treatment done right extends the life of the record by slowing down or reversing damage to paper, bindings, and leather while at the same time being reversible and not a permanent alteration to an item.  Stay tuned for future conservation updates about free Negro registers and other interesting records within the Library of Virginia’s holdings.

The Library of Virginia welcomes donations to our general conservation fund in any amount.  Interested in sponsoring a particular book or item?  See suggestions on the Adopt Virginia History page.

-Sarah Nerney, Senior Local Records Archivist

The Virginia Circuit Court Records Preservation Program (CCRP) is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. Part of the Library of Virginia’s Local Records Services branch, the program was created in 1992 to address the preservation needs of some of the most important records in the state – the records of Virginia’s 120 circuit courts. The CCRP continues to not only preserve, digitize, and microfilm historic records from around the commonwealth but also to reach out to circuit court clerks in each locality, offering them consultative services and financial assistance through its grant program. Since its creation twenty years ago, the program has awarded over 1100 grants, totaling nearly $16 million, to Virginia circuit court clerks to help address the preservation needs of records stored in their localities.

Twenty years later, access to Virginia’s historic court records has never been wider with more than 7 million digital chancery court images from fifty-seven counties and cities now available online through the Chancery Records Index (CRI), created to increase access to Virginia’s historic equity cases. In celebration of this important milestone, we’ve created this video celebrating the twenty year history of this innovative program that has helped ensure the preservation and accessibility of records that are a treasure trove of state and local history.

-Bari Helms, Local Records Archivist

*Updated 16 October 2012*
On 16 October 2012, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an Op/Ed by Cynthia P. Morrison, Clerk of the Portsmouth Circuit Court and Frank D. Hargrove, Jr., Clerk of the Hanover Circuit Court, commemorating the 20th anniversary.

In the early 1980s, Mary Helen Gravitt went looking for a coffin. Gravitt, then a secretary at Virgilina Elementary School, was looking for a Halloween decoration in an old store building but stumbled upon a piece of Virgilina’s history. So began the strange turn of events that led to the town of Virgilina’s first town council minute book’s arrival at the Library of Virginia where it will be preserved, reformatted, and stored for posterity.

Recognizing the significance of Gravitt’s find, teacher Hallie T. Owen studied the book and published an article in the South  Boston News and Record back in February 1983. Owen wrote in celebration of Virgilina’s 83^rd birthday and described the town’s ordinances and regulations which ranged from the prohibition of playing marbles in town streets to allowing bar partitions that separated white and African American customers. Not knowing what to do with the volume but recognizing its importance, Mary Helen Gravitt held onto the book for the next thirty years.

At the chance request of a South Boston history buff, Owen’s 1983 article was reprinted in February of this year and spotted by the mother-in-law of one our archivists. Local Records director Carl Childs followed up on the article and with the help of Hallie Owen was able to track down the whereabouts of the minute book and persuade the town to donate the volume to the library. Childs emphasized that “we are not hoarders” here at the Library of Virginia and that our goal is to see that historic public records are preserved and made accessible. The Library of Virginia will microfilm the Virgilina town council minute book and ensure that the public has ready access to the reformatted records.

The Executive Papers of Governor Thomas Jefferson, 1779-1781, have been named one of Virginia’s top ten endangered artifacts by the Virginia Association of Museums. The letters and manuscripts documenting Jefferson’s service as the second governor of Virginia address the challenges he faced during the Revolutionary War, the drafting of the Articles of Confederation, the negotiation of the boundaries of Virginia and her neighbors, and the dangers of the frontier. The papers are currently undergoing conservation treatments thanks in part to a $110, 000 grant received from Save America’s Treasures.  Watch as the video shows Leslie Courtois, Senior Conservator with Etherington Conservation Services, as she works to restore these valuable records in the Library of Virginia’s conservation labs. Thanks to Paige Neal for her script writing and narrating, to videographer Pierre Courtois, and to Audrey Johnson and Dale Neighbors of Special Collections for providing images. For more information on the collection and grant see the earlier blog post “Grant Allows Jefferson’s Papers to be Preserved.”

The Circuit Court Records Preservation Program (CCRP) Grant Review Board met on May 25, 2011, at the Library of Virginia to consider records preservation grant requests from 46 circuit courts across the commonwealth. A total of 54 applications were submitted with requests totaling over $424,000. After careful evaluation and discussion of all applications, the board approved 47 grant projects for $375,859.32.

The CCRP is a part of the Library of Virginia’s Local Records Services Branch. Funded through a $1.50 of the court clerk’s recordation fee, the CCRP provides resources to help preserve and make accessible permanent circuit court records. The program awards grants to the commonwealth’s circuit court clerks to help address the preservation needs of the records housed in their localities. Since 1992, the CCRP has awarded over 1100 preservation grants for more than $15 million dollars. For a full listing of awarded grants, please see the meeting minutes here.

The board is comprised of five members: three circuit court clerks, appointed annually by the president of the Virginia Court Clerks’ Association, and two staff members from the Library of Virginia, currently the State Archivist and the Local Records Program Manager. The review board convenes regularly to evaluate grant applications to award grant funds for processing, conserving, securing, and increasing access to circuit court records. Clerk members of this year’s board were Judy Worthington of Chesterfield County, Mark “Bo” Taylor of Scott County, and Terry Whittle of the City of Winchester. Library members were Sandy Treadway as State Archivist and Gregory Crawford as Local Records Program Manager. Carl Childs, Director of Local Records Services served as grants coordinator and moderated the meeting.

-Carl Childs, Local Records Director

-Dale Dulaney, Local Records Archival Assistant

In recognition of Preservation Week, April 24–30, the Library of Virginia is offering a special event highlighting the Library’s ongoing commitment to preserving Virginia’s history for future generations through its professional conservation programs. Join us to see preservation demonstrations showing proper document repair techniques, examples of conserved materials from around the Library, and also for tours of our in-house conservation lab Wednesday, April 27^th at 11:45 AM and 12:30 PM. All events and parking are free and open to the public.  Light refreshments and coffee will be provided.

During a panel discussion titled Facing Digitization Issues, Digital Initiatives & Web Services Manager Kathy Jordan was showing off the LVA website and highlighting various digital collections. When she mentioned the Chancery Records Index, “the room broke out into loud, sustained applause,” according to Local Records Services Director Carl Childs. “Needless to say, [it was] a good feeling and testament to our good work and how much it is appreciated.”

In addition to historical and genealogical information, chancery court records offer a unique glimpse into the everyday lives of Virginians from the early 18th century on because the records rely so heavily on testimony from witnesses. The CRI is the result of a sustained effort to process, preserve, microfilm and digitize those records to make them available to the public. Access the CRI at http://www.virginiamemory.com/collections/chancery/.

It is always nice to feel appreciated but it is especially nice to know that local historical society members – the people who are often on the front lines of preserving and celebrating Virginia’s local history – recognize the LVA’s work.

An estimated 115 people representing 58 local historical societies from around Virginia attended the workshop. It was made possible by a generous State and National Archival Partnership (SNAP) grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Partners in the project include the Virginia Association of Museums (VAM), the Henrico County Historical Society, and the Goochland County Historical Society, along with the Library of Virginia Foundation and the Virginia State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB).

–Dale Dulaney, LVA Local Records Archival Assistant