Thursday, August 26, 1999
County lags 200 years on some paperwork
Campbell aims to preserve old records
BY TERRY FLYNN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
NEWPORT — It's unlikely anyone will ask, but the Campbell County clerk's office can still provide a record of the marriage of William D. Hart and Elizabeth Bryan in 1795.
And should anyone ever question an injunction obtained in 1798 by a gentle man named Daniel Boone, County Clerk Jack Snodgrass has the document to prove the injunction was issued.
With a recent grant of $7,146 from the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives, Mr. Snodgrass and his staff will continue to buy protective storage to preserve nearly priceless documents, some dated earlier than Kentucky's statehood in 1792.
“We have received several grants from Libraries and Archives over the years to protect and save these documents and books,” Chief Deputy Clerk Martha Jones said Wednesday as she looked at some of the county's earliest records.
Ms. Jones and Deputy Clerk Nancy Rogers are deeply involved in the preservation, which involves the microfilming of original county documents and storage of 20th century documents in acid-free containers that protect the paper.
For the really old documents, especially those produced before 1855, a process known as Mylar encapsulation is used. The documents, bearing the names and signatures of such historic figures as Boone, Henry Clay, Pat rick Henry and James Taylor, are sealed in transparent sleeves to ward off moisture and mold.
When William Hart announced his intent to wed Elizabeth Bryan, the documentation was in the form of a contract that included a bond of “50 pounds current money of the State of Kentucky.”
The contract stated that “if there should not be any lawful cause to obstruct (the marriage), then the above obligation is to be void.” If the marriage didn't come off, however, Mr. Hart forfeited the 50 pounds.
The marriage contract, written in dark ink on a piece of heavy, parchment-like paper, was witnessed by James Taylor, one of Newport's founders who would become the county's first clerk of courts in 1799 when Campbell County was formed.
The document officially establishing the boundaries of Campbell County from portions of Scott, Mason and Harrison counties also is on file in Mr. Snodgrass' office.
Frank Levstik, an official with Libraries and Archives who works with Northern Kentucky communities and counties, said the department regularly receives requests for grants from all over Kentucky.
“There are courthouses and city halls around the state with very old records and documents that need to be preserved,” he said. He was in Melbourne on Wednesday to assist that river town in codifying its records with help from a grant.
“Some of the later documents are in bad shape because they are on paper similar to newsprint,” he said. “They dry and yellow very quickly. The early documents, from the 1700s, are often in better shape because they were written on paper with a high rag (cloth) content that doesn't break down as quickly.”
Ms. Jones also produced a book Wednesday, bound in pigskin, that was the ledger of a man who recorded land transactions and plats in both Virginia and Kentucky.
“The first part of the book has records from Virginia,” she said, pointing to hand-drawn maps and descriptions of land dated in the 1720s. “Later, when he came to Kentucky, he started at the other end of the book and began recording land in Kentucky. This is the sort of thing that must be preserved.”
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