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Funds sought to preserve Washington County documents

County commissioners hear request, discuss past preservation effort

Photo by Chad Plauche-Adkins Linda Showalter examines historical documents at Marietta College on Thursday.

MARIETTA — In 1992, Common Pleas Court Judge Ed Lane wanted to do research on the history of his family. He went to the fourth floor of the Washington County Courthouse and discovered the county’s history turning to dust, he said.

“Some of it is deteriorated beyond use,” Lane said.

Retired since 2016, Lane has taken up the task of trying to preserve the over 200-year-old documents that helped shape Washington County. Saving that history comes at a financial cost, though.

During Thursday’s meeting of the County Commissioners, Commissioner Ron Feathers brought to their attention the need of funds for the project.

“I’ve been to the fourth floor of the courthouse and saw papers strewn across the dusty floor. But I’m not suggesting we give the entire $50,000 asked for to complete this project,” Feathers said.

But an investment needs to be made to keep the county’s history intact, he said.

Attempts have been made in the past to preserve county records. An organization based out of Utah called Family Search spent a year and a half with the documents trying to preserve them, Lane said.

“They worked mainly with the genealogy records. The big thing they did was organize all the records and suggest companies that could help finish the job,” said Lane.

Some of the documents they didn’t preserve are marriage records from 1780, documents signed by George Washington and the first order given by officials in Washington County.

“Everybody had to have a gun and a certain amount of ammunition,” Lane said.

Right now though very little is being done to keep the records safe, said Common Pleas Court Judge Mark Kerenyi.

“We put blinds up to keep light off them, because unfortunately paper fades,” he said.

The process also includes digitizing the papers so people could look for documents online.

“We want the documents to be as accessible as possible,” Kerenyi said.

A person who understands what goes into preserving historical documents is Linda Showalter, special collections associate at the Marietta College library.

“It can be a very expensive and time consuming process,” she said.

The special collections area of the library has security measures, purified air that is kept at a constant temperature of 65 degrees and 40 percent humidity. The library also has a fire suppression system that uses special chemicals that are more friendly to the documents it is protecting. Some of Marietta’s oldest documents are already at Marietta College’s library.

“We have documents dating back to 1800,” Showalter said.

Even though Lane has collected $50,000 in donations for the project it is going to take a lot more to complete.

“I’d estimate we need from $150,000 to $500,000 to completely get the job done,” Lane said.

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