Recordkeeping (or not) in the 21st Century

I am currently attempting to finish a project in Morris County and every plat record has been sent out for restoration and they have no backup in place.
Plat index is still in the clerk's office. It does not however give complete details to identify the plat I need to confirm as being recorded and no deed I have examined gives a recorded destination of the so called "1954 Plat".
I wonder how "plat not available at time of survey" sounds for a descriptor.

Kent McMillan, post: 377080, member: 3 wrote: ..What is it about the 21st century that might lead a person to conclude that old court records are merely curiosities?

Kent there is only a small sliver of the general population that understands the importance of maintaining property records. Most folks think the current records are the only ones anyone would ever need.

And don't even get me started on the proliferation of the assessor's little truncated and abbreviated property descriptions....

One of the courthouses I work out of recently received money for the rehabilitation and scanning of some it's oldest and most used records. Great thing, until I heard they would be nearly unavailable for a month.

To his credit, the public agency head asked local surveyors what month would work best and indicated the document restoration company would provide copies at pretty high rate (+/-$30 retrieval fee) if we really really needed something.

In this case it needs to be done, the books are falling apart and I truly appreciate being given the opportunity to provide input.

Steve

I have done researched in a county near me that dated back to the late 1800's. It was for a road and I needed the document that had created it as a public right-of-way. Fortunately, I found at the County Surveyor's office the old "road packet" that had notes on the surveys done and the documents files. This particular road was declared a public highway and evidenced as such in the old Board of Supervisor's minutes books. These books are in the archives at the county's historical museum. At least they were accessible.

skwyd, post: 377612, member: 6874 wrote: I have done research in a county near me that dated back to the late 1800's. It was for a road and I needed the document that had created it as a public right-of-way. Fortunately, I found at the County Surveyor's office the old "road packet" that had notes on the surveys done and the documents files. This particular road was declared a public highway and evidenced as such in the old Board of Supervisor's minutes books. These books are in the archives at the county's historical museum. At least they were accessible.

Skwyd,

We are lucky to have inherited those documents when the old Courthouse was demolished. Ideally, they would be scanned and put into our GIS like our filed maps are, but at least they reside in our vault and are accessible through our road map indices.

Warren Smith, post: 377618, member: 9900 wrote: Skwyd,

We are lucky to have inherited those documents when the old Courthouse was demolished. Ideally, they would be scanned and put into our GIS like our filed maps are, but at least they reside in our vault and are accessible through our road map indices.

Yes, that was a very fortuitous event.

So.... when are you going to get those scanned? B-)

Kent McMillan, post: 377080, member: 3 wrote: The Dallas County Clerk evidently decided to just send them over to the public library where they are inaccessible for some indeterminate period of time until a remodeling is complete and the records can return from storage.

What is it about the 21st century that might lead a person to conclude that old court records are merely curiosities?

Kent,

Based on your past description, I think Dallas County Clerk's office is the second worst in Texas after Bexar County. Or at least that was my perception when I was going there all the time 15 years ago.

Andy Nold, post: 377668, member: 7 wrote: Based on your past description, I think Dallas County Clerk's office is the second worst in Texas after Bexar County. Or at least that was my perception when I was going there all the time 15 years ago.

I'm actually a fan of Bexar County now that they have all the deed records digitized. The County and District Court Records are another matter, but they have all of the Bexar Land District records in very good shape in a climate-controlled room.

In the case of the 1881 condemnation suit in County Court, I ended up finding a copy of the decree among the land papers of the railroad company in another library. So I don't actually have to wait for the Dallas Public Library to finish remodeling the 7th floor and get the Dallas County Court records back on the shelves.

Kent McMillan, post: 377669, member: 3 wrote: In the case of the 1881 condemnation suit in County Court, I ended up finding a copy of the decree among the land papers of the railroad company in another library.

Kent,
When you make such discoveries do you do some kind of happy dance or do you just grumble about the time it took??
I would at least do a 'professional' fist pump...
DDSM:beer:

Dan B. Robison, post: 377675, member: 34 wrote: When you make such discoveries do you do some kind of happy dance or do you just grumble about the time it took?

I thought it was pretty cool to find the copy of the decree and even more remarkable that it could be found among the nearly EIGHTY boxes of land records of the now-defunct railroad that included those of an earlier railroad it had bought in 1882.

It turned out to be ridiculously easy to find the thing in that pile of paper becase the railroad valuation map I got from NARA earlier this week used a file numbering system that remains in use in the library's collection.

The fun part was being able to tell the archivists a few things about the mountain of land papers they have on their shelves, its significance, and share a copy of the valuation map that provides a graphical key to some of their records.