Another New Collection
Posted by Melissa Barker on Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Hello
Everyone! Hope your enjoying the beautiful sunshine and warmer weather this
week!
The archives had a great week last week. Another manuscript collection was completed and on the shelf. It is the Alex Daugherty Collection which was part of the larger Houston County Historical Society Collection that was donated to the archives. This collection contains correspondence between Alex Daugherty and various Washington D.C. Senators and Congressman trying to get his son into the Naval Academy. Also, correspondence concerning Alex' insurance business. Alex was actually a Cumberland City native and was president of the Cumberland City Bank. This is an interesting collection of papers.
We are also continueing to work on the 1970's court records and slowly going through the boxed County Mayor's Records. The Mayor's records are much more time consuming to process and go through due to the fact that they were boxed up as needed to make space in the Mayor's Office and so the records are divided up into file folders and each folder is captioned something different. All of the Legislative Body Meeting documents and all of the boards and committee meeting minutes are also located amongst these records. The legistlative body meeting documents and committee meeting minutes are permanent records and must be saved forever, so as we are sifting through these Mayor's records we are pulling these particular records out and putting them together and processing them in chronological order, we have some of these legislative body meeting documents dating back to the 1950's which back then the meeting was called the County Court Meeting. This collection is truly interesting and very important to document our county government and it's history. I do wish that we had these records dating back to the 1800's when our county was formed but so far we only have records saved back to the 1950's.
I have not been back to the old jail site basement. Since a key has not been turned over yet, I am still in a holding pattern. There is some work that will need to be done to stop water from coming in and the mold from growing before we can any records up there. I knew that this process would not be a quick one but if the fixes can be made and I am assured that the space will be as optimal for record storage as possible, that will be good. When I say optimal I mean temperature, humidity and over all conditions. With the old jail basement space we will never have perfect temperature and humidity but we can try to get as close as possible. We don't have perfect temperature and humidity in our office in the courthouse but it is close as we will get. It might be that when the fixes are made and we get closer to moving records up there, we may need to put a dehumidifier in that space, we will just have to see.
The archives had a great week last week. Another manuscript collection was completed and on the shelf. It is the Alex Daugherty Collection which was part of the larger Houston County Historical Society Collection that was donated to the archives. This collection contains correspondence between Alex Daugherty and various Washington D.C. Senators and Congressman trying to get his son into the Naval Academy. Also, correspondence concerning Alex' insurance business. Alex was actually a Cumberland City native and was president of the Cumberland City Bank. This is an interesting collection of papers.
We are also continueing to work on the 1970's court records and slowly going through the boxed County Mayor's Records. The Mayor's records are much more time consuming to process and go through due to the fact that they were boxed up as needed to make space in the Mayor's Office and so the records are divided up into file folders and each folder is captioned something different. All of the Legislative Body Meeting documents and all of the boards and committee meeting minutes are also located amongst these records. The legistlative body meeting documents and committee meeting minutes are permanent records and must be saved forever, so as we are sifting through these Mayor's records we are pulling these particular records out and putting them together and processing them in chronological order, we have some of these legislative body meeting documents dating back to the 1950's which back then the meeting was called the County Court Meeting. This collection is truly interesting and very important to document our county government and it's history. I do wish that we had these records dating back to the 1800's when our county was formed but so far we only have records saved back to the 1950's.
I have not been back to the old jail site basement. Since a key has not been turned over yet, I am still in a holding pattern. There is some work that will need to be done to stop water from coming in and the mold from growing before we can any records up there. I knew that this process would not be a quick one but if the fixes can be made and I am assured that the space will be as optimal for record storage as possible, that will be good. When I say optimal I mean temperature, humidity and over all conditions. With the old jail basement space we will never have perfect temperature and humidity but we can try to get as close as possible. We don't have perfect temperature and humidity in our office in the courthouse but it is close as we will get. It might be that when the fixes are made and we get closer to moving records up there, we may need to put a dehumidifier in that space, we will just have to see.
Melissa Barker is a Certified Archives Records Manager currently working as the Houston County, Tennessee Archivist since 2010. She is also a Professional Genealogist lecturing, teaching and writing about the genealogy research process, researching in archives and records preservation. She conducts virtual webinar presentations all across the United States for genealogical and historical societies. She writes a popular blog entitled A Genealogist in the Archives. In 2016, she became the Reviews Editor for the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) magazine FORUM. She has been researching her own family history for the past 25 years.
