Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
Thanks to friends, I got a hold of some documents posted by the
North Carolina Genealogical Society, that are integral
to the story of the destroyed records in Franklin County. I am reposting those documents in the timeline I have laid out below, and at the end of this document.
If anyone has anything additional to add, I would certainly appreciate it. I have a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg.
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TIMELINE
August, 1964 – “Franklin County Records Inventory
and Schedules” conducted by the State Department of Archives and
History, Raleigh, N.C. This document (available here:
FranklinCtyRecordsInventory09-1964)
is a 50-year-old document detailing the contents of the Franklin County
Court House records, and indications from NC Archives on which
materials are to be disposed of, how, and when. This document is crucial
in understanding what follows below. In effect, what happened, is that
in 1964 the NC Archives gave recommendations for the destruction of
materials, but for some reason the folks in Franklin County chose to
ignore the instructions, and saved the materials in the basement. This
document comes back into play in October 2013, and is used as the basis
for the folks in the 21st century NC Archives, strongly urging
destruction of what the community in Franklin County deems to be a
critical records of their cultural heritage.
May, 2013 – Franklin County Clerk of Superior Court, Alice Faye Hunter resigns. A new Clerk is appointed;
Patricia Burnette Chastain.
Mrs. Chastain
discovered that the basement of the courthouse has been abandoned for
many years. Upon opening the basement she found old documents, books,
and records in a state of disarray, some destroyed by mold, some in
boxes, some piled and strewn on the floor. Neglect and water damage,
repairmen periodically in and out of the room without concern for the
arrangement of documents, and failure of some of the boxes, resulted in
an unorganized, unhealthful mess.
At some point during May, 2013,
Ms. Chastain contacted
Diane Taylor Torrent of
Franklin County Heritage
(a volunteer association of amateur and professional genealogists,
historians, and citizens interested in Franklin County history) in order
to assist her in assessing the historical significance of the
materials, and (ostensibly) to determine what should and could be
salvaged.
A cursory examination revealed that there were documents in the room
from many Franklin County agencies, including; the court as well as
register of deeds, county finance, board of education, sheriff’s office,
county jail, elections board and others. Some records dated back as far
as 1840.
May 16 –
The Heritage Society of Franklin County, NC, presented a program to its membership along with members of the community
to discuss the best way to proceed. Present were local historians, genealogists, friends of the library, the arts council, the new Clerk of Court (
Ms. Chastain) and County Commissioner
Sidney Dunston. All present were shown photos of the basement and the condition of the records.
May 25, 26, & 27 –
Ms. Chastain and
Ms. Torrent
spent three days removing trash, broken furniture, discarded carpet,
etc. from the basement, so as to make space to reach and work with the
documents.
According to
Ms. Torrent,
“Mrs. Chastain recognized the value of having a group of genealogist(s)
and historians available who were willing and able to ascertain the
historic worth of these records to the community and asked the Heritage
Society to review, record, digitize and preserve the records. Due to
space constraints and conditions in the basement it was decided that
only a few would be allowed to begin the work. The Heritage Society
provided the appropriate protective gear for the work to begin. Masks,
gloves, sanitizers, etc. were bought by the Society and placed in the
basement for the use of everyone entering.”
Late May, early June, 2013 – Work began, using a few
volunteers, to collect loose documents from the floors and to place them
in boxes for later, more thorough examination. A variety of box types
were used, including recycled boxes from county agencies with recent
dates on the labels. (It has been presumed that the dates on the labels
caused some confusion among both County and State workers, later in the
review of the room, giving them the impression that the boxes contained
very current records which might pose a threat of identity theft or
privacy violation. In fact there were no records more recent than 1969
found by workers sorting through the materials.)
The following is a description of the early investigation, accounted by
Ms. Torrent of Franklin County Heritage Society;
“Immediately
we found Chattel Mortgages from the 1890′s, court dockets from post
civil war to prohibition, delayed birth certificate applications with
original supporting documents (letters from Grandma, bible records,
birth certificates, etc), county receipts on original letterhead from
businesses long extinct, poll record books, original school, road and
bridge bonds denoting the building of the county, law books still in
their original paper wrappings, etc., etc. etc. The list goes on and
on. Our original feelings of shock that the records were there and in
such bad condition led to feelings of joy that they were still there and
that someone had thought to retain them for us to discover so many
years later.
“Each book or box opened produced a new treasure. A letter,
stamped and in the original envelope, from a Franklin County soldier
serving in France during the First World War asking the court to be sure
his sister and his estate was looked after while he was away. A
naturalization paper from the late 1890s for an immigrant from Russia
escaping the tyranny of the Czar. A document from County Commissioners
in the early years of road building requesting another county repair
their road as it entered the county. Lists of county employees and what
their wages were in 1900. A court document paying the court reporter
who took the depositions in the “Sweat Ward” case, (Ward beheaded a man
in the 1930s and later became the last man to be lynched in the county).
Postcards, county bills, audits, cancelled checks, newspaper
clippings, store ads from long gone businesses. Boxes and boxes of
court cases covering the years of prohibition, a docket from an
individual accused of running a “baudy house” within the city limits, a
photo tucked now and then inside a book, one of the courthouse unseen
since the 1920s. Again, nothing was in any order and many of the boxes
were combinations of records from many decades.”
June 2013 –
Ms. Torrent
contacted the County and requested new, durable records boxes, to
replace the recycled office boxes and liquor store boxes the team of
volunteers working on the project had been using up to that date. She
received 40 boxes from the County.
The Heritage Society contacted the
North Carolina State Archives for advice on handling old documents and the best archiving method. (
Sarah E. Koonts, Director of the North Carolina Archives, records the date of contact as August, 2013 in her October, 2013 letter to
Patricia B. Chastain, Franklin County Clerk of Court.
See Letter Here:
Koontz2Chastain-10-29-2013)
June and July, 2013 – According to
Ms. Torrent,
the North Carolina State Archives determined that their division should
have control over the basements contents. The NC Archives sent “a
representative” who looked through the basement and said “they would get
back to us with a report on the next steps.”
- According to
Sarah Koonts letter of October 29, 2013 (linked above), two representatives were sent on August 21, 2013. These were NC Archives employees
Tom Vincent and
Carolyn “Carie” Chesarino.
- At some point,
Carie Chesarino and
Sarah C. West;
Safety and Health Specialist, NC Administrative Office of the Courts,
also visited the Franklin County Courthouse, as is shown in Ms. Wests’
report of October 21, 2013. See that email to the left.
In the meantime, the Franklin County Heritage Society continued
working in the cramped and moldy environment of the basement while
waiting for an assessment from the NC Archives. June and July were
very wet months and many days workers were unable to enter the basement,
due to unhealthful conditions (damp and mold.)
August, 2013 – August 5, 2013
Steve Trubilla,
on behalf of the Franklin County Heritage Society, made a request at
the County Commissioner’s meeting, to provide adequate space for the
preservation to continue.
Within the same time frame,
JM Dickens,
a local business owner, donated the use of office space across the
street from the courthouse. Additionally, Franklin County citizens
donated supplies.
The Franklin County Commissioners agreed to provide electric and water to the donated offices for six months.
Holt Kornegay,
Franklin County Librarian, attended the August meeting of the Heritage
Society and offered to train volunteers to use a computer program
designed to archive the records so that they would integrate into the
existing system and be accessible to the public.
A request was made to The United Way to supply the Society with computers and
Steve Trubilla donated a scanner/copier.
August 13, 2013,
Mrs. Chastain,
Franklin County Clerk of Court, provided trustees to begin moving the
records to the newly donated space. All of the new, clean file boxes,
repacked with the old, dusty records from the basement floor, were moved
to the upstairs space
August 13 – 16 –
Diane Taylor Torrent was out of town on business.
August 15, 2013 – An issue of proper insurance arose, temporarily stopping progress.
Superior Court Judge Bob Hobgood offered to pay for the insurance for the 6 months that the offices were in use.
During this general period – The Heritage Society was told to
“Stand Down” by County Management (it is unclear who “County Management”
refers to, whether it was
Chastain, the County Commissioners,
Angela Harris, the Franklin County Manager,
or just who.) The reasoning for this order was for the need to preserve
“chain of custody” for sensitive materials like adoption records, birth
records, etc. This concern arose erroneously, according to
Ms. Torrent,
due to the use of recycled boxes with contemporary labels, which were
used to contain much older documents that were not related to the labels
on the boxes which contained them. Nevertheless, the order to cease
working was given until all the county agencies with documents in the
basement could be contacted.
Sometime prior to August 16, 2013 – At some point during
Ms. Torrents few days long absence, someone allowed access to the basement and to the donated room. According to
Ms. Torrent, “It
was now that I discovered that during my absence, access had been
obtained (not through chain of command and the Clerk of Court) and county management (eds. note, this statement implicates Franklin County Manager,
Angela Harris)
had allowed people from the elections board, education, register of
deeds and the State Archives and others to go through the basement and
the office and remove items that they deemed to be under their control.
Items were strewn about the office floor and boxes that had been
carefully stacked were opened and askew. ALL of the new white file
boxes were gone, taken by the State Archives. There was no way of
knowing who took what or what was missing. No one had left a log.
“Our immediate question was how did this action fall within the
chain of command? How was it better to have so many hands and eyes on
the records searching for what may be theirs rather than a few careful
historians organizing and sorting? The time capsule was now
compromised and we no longer had control of the integrity of the
records.”
After August 16, 2013 – Mrs. Torrent
was allowed limited access to the remaining documents in the basement
to do a cursory inventory of what remained. According to her reports,
she was not given access or time to do more than simply label the
remaining boxes with a rough idea of what was in them. None of the many
ledger books were opened or reviewed.
At some point it was discovered that North Carolina State Archives
personnel removed all the new white boxes containing some of the
salvaged documents (these are the boxes that had been requested in June,
to replace recycled boxes) to the North Carolina State Archives in
Raleigh.
October 10, 2013 –
Diane Taylor Torrent provides, at the request (date unknown) of
Patricia Burnette Chastain
and officials at the North Carolina Archives, a partial inventory of
the documents contained in the Franklin County Courthouse basement. Of
course the supplied inventory is incomplete, as the work had barely
begun when the Heritage Society was ordered to “Stand Down”.
October 21, 2013 –
Sarah C. West, Safety and Health Specialist, NC Administrative Office of the Courts, provides to
Patricia Barnette Chastain,
Franklin County Clerk of Court, her full report on the state of the
basement and associated water damage and mold damage throughout the
building. The document is available here (
West2Chastain10-21-2013), but in essence
Ms. West, a health and safety inspector –
not a historian – recommends the destruction of
all documents
in the basement, many in the building’s Law Library, and more in Judge
Hobgood’s office – on public health grounds – due to the presence of
mold spores, which have contaminated every crevice and article of paper
in the building.
October 29, 2013 –
Rebecca McGee-Langford, Assistant State Records Administrator, Government Records Section Manager, North Carolina State Archives, sends a letter to
Patricia B. Chastain, Franklin County Clerk of Superior Court, Louisburg, N.C. In this letter (found here:
Koontz2Chastain-10-29-2013), she states that she provides a
“detailed listing of the records stored in the courthouse basement”.
However, this statement cannot be true, as no single agency or
individual has had access to the basement or the records in order to
compile a “detailed list”. The Heritage Society had more time with the
materials than any other entity, but they were ordered to “stand down”
as soon as their work had begun in earnest.
Following her claim of “a detailed list”,
Ms. McGee-Langford restates the destruction schedules detailed in the August 1964 document referenced at the beginning of this post.
Ms. McGee-Langford closes her letter with the following conflicting (given the dire health and safety warning) statements:
“The State Archives of North Carolina has taken possession of 15
boxes of civil and criminal case files, 4 volumes of Justice Dockets,
Criminal Court (1960’s), and 1 volume of Records of Magistrates
(1880’s). These records were in better condition than the records that
remain in the basement. These records will be preserved by the State
Archives.
“In conclusion, we urge county officials to take immediate action
to destroy these records. No other disposition is advised, including
donation of the records to a non-government entity for any reason. The
health and safety issue concerning these records outweighs all other
considerations.”
Following this letter from
Ms. McGee-Langford at the NC Archives,
Ms. Torrent
inquired, first to the County Commissioners, then to her state
representatives, then to the Governor himself, why the documents
retained in “pretty” clean boxes were judged safe to be carried off –
even though they had originated from the same contaminated environment
as all the other records (still contained in recycled boxes), when the
inspector’s report clearly stated a contamination risk by mold particles
invisible to the naked eye.
Ms. Torrent got no response, except that the NC Archives representatives deemed these records “clean”.
November 15, 2013 – In an email from
Carolyn (“Carie”) Cherisino, Head of Records Description Unit, Government Records Section, NC Archives, to
Becky McGee-Langford, Ms. Cherisono states,
“Upon
examining the photographs provided, it has been determined that the
documents in question are not of historical value and should be
destroyed along with the rest of the records that had been stored in the
basement of the Franklin County Courthouse.”
She elaborates,
“The permanent retention of every government
record being an unsustainable enterprise, the Government Records Section
of the State Archives of North Carolina carefully analyzes government
record-keeping systems and statutory obligations in order to identify
record series of enduring value.”
Ms. Cherisino then
goes on to cite three examples of records from the basement, which in
her opinion are of little historical value, or are redundant to copies
that exist in the North Carolina State Archives, as supporting her
decision and her logic.
Just three documents, from many thousands that were never examined in the basement at the Franklin County Courthouse.
Friday, December 6, 2013, after 5:00 PM – Without prior notice
to either the Franklin County Heritage Society or other citizens with
an interest in preserving these materials, a crew (unknown exactly who
they were, who hired them, or what agency they may have been working
for) showed up in full Hazmat suits, in white, state-owned vans, and
under the silent, cooperative protection of the Franklin County
Sheriff’s Department. They requested and gained access to the Franklin
County Courthouse basement. Over the course of a few hours they carried
away all the contents (all boxes, papers, and all the ledgers –
everything.) They removed these materials to the Franklin County Animal
Shelter incinerator and began a many day’s long process of burning the
materials.
See photographs of the men in hazmat suits here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.553905598031235.1073741837.366834443405019&type=3
See photos of some of the destroyed documents here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.556194484469013.1073741838.366834443405019&type=1
See a WRAL news story, which aired Wednesday, December 18, 2013, here: http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/13230617/#/vid13230617
—————
DOCUMENTS:
FranklinCtyRecordsInventory09-1964
Torrent2Chastain10-10-2013
West2Chastain10-21-2013
Koontz2Chastain-10-29-2013
Email from
Chesarino to
McGee-Langford, dated November 15, 2013, see image below.
Email from Chesarino to McGee-Langford on 11/15/2013
.jpg)
Thanks to friends, I got a hold of some documents posted by the North Carolina Genealogical Society, that are integral to the story of the destroyed records in Franklin County. I am reposting those documents in the timeline I have laid out below, and at the end of this document.
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