Loose Leaf Notes

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on March 10, 2022.

In a building on Wilson Street, behind the Pharm House, two Floyd County Historical Society volunteers are busy at work on a worthy and labor intensive project, preserving old historical records of the county, some that date back as far as the formation of the county in 1831.

Ann Shank, a FCHS board member with an archivist background, explained that the roots of the project began in 2002 when the Historical Society received boxes full of old county courthouse documents.  Although, the Courthouse currently digitizes its documents, Shank and fellow-volunteer Cynthia Womak said that because there was no room in the courthouse for the outdated paper documents, they were at risk of being discarded. Judge Gino Williams, president of the FCHS, was influential in bringing attention to the importance of saving the historical records, they said.

Listed by categories and dates, the documents include financial appraisals and sales, criminal warrants, legal business of the commonwealth and more. “You’d be surprised how many people in the 1800s have the same family names as the people of Floyd County today,” said Womak, a retired fifth grade teacher who taught in Fairfax County.

“The piles of received documents were folded and wrapped, many tied with string, and packed in boxes,” said Shank. Because many of them were stuck together and too brittle to open safely, Shank began researching the process of humidifying old documents. She credits the Society of American Archivists for providing directions for the humidifier design that they use. She was also able to get some instruction from Mike Ryan, a local historian, retired National Park Ranger and author of the book, Life in Rock Castle, Virginia: In Their Own Words, who had first-hand experience with the process.

The room where the women work two days a week in two hour shifts is full of large plastic tubs on tables. Inside the tubs are PVC pipe dowels holding up open grid plastic shelves, which were hand-cut by Shank. The tubs are filled with ¼ inch of warm water and documents are arranged on the shelves. The idea is to make the documents moist but not wet, so they can be flattened and then scanned, explained Shank.

While Shank works on humidifying the documents, Womak carefully transcribes them once they are flattened. She looks for events, dates, witnesses, verdicts etc. and puts her finished work in folders. Then, the original documents are given to Jim Slusher, Vice Chair of the FCHS, who scans them. Slusher’s wife Lucy enters the data prepared by Womak into the historical society’s webpage, where they will be accessible to people who want to do research.

Shank explained that the documents couldn’t be stored as is because they wouldn’t be able to be opened and would further deteriorate over time. Historical society members agreed that they wanted to make the information accessible online to the people of the county. The original documents will eventually be able to be viewed by appointment at the Society’s museum at 217 North Locust Street.

Currently, the Society’s museum is closed for the winter season but will reopen on April 8, Friday and Saturdays from noon to 4:00 pm. The Society maintains an archive of historic artifacts, documents and photographs at the museum and hosts free programs, including lectures, publications, community outreach and exhibits.

Members of the Society are talking about developing a program later this year that will demonstrate the humidification process to the public. “It will take years,” said Shank about the ongoing project. She suggested anyone wanting to volunteer to help should contact the Historical Society at (540) 745-3247 or info@floydhistoricalsociety.org. ________Colleen Redman