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Union County Register of Deeds completes preservation of 1842–1993 marriage records
Summary
Crystal Gilliard, Union County Register of Deeds, said her office finished a conservation project restoring marriage registers from 1842 through 1993 using an automation enhancement and preservation fund financed by recording fees; the office invites the public to view the restored volumes.
Crystal Gilliard, Union County Register of Deeds, said her office has completed a project to preserve historical marriage registers dating from 1842 through 1993.
Gilliard told the meeting the preservation effort grew out of an automation enhancement and preservation fund the General Assembly supported about eight to nine years ago. "What this enables is the fees that we collect on recording real estate transactions enable us to put money into a preservation fund," she said.
The Register of Deeds office records the county's real estate transactions and vital records, including births, deaths and marriages. Gilliard, who said she has served in the office since 2004, said the office typically undertakes two to three preservation projects each year to stabilize fragile records.
The marriage registers addressed in the recent project were in poor condition when they were received for conservation. "As you can see back here, these books, they were actually in ziplock bags," Gilliard said, describing pages that had become folded, oily and, in some cases, crumbling. Conservators were able to flatten and repair pages and improve legibility, she said: "The preservation process also lightens the document so you're able to read it a whole lot clearer."
Gilliard described how conservators can reassemble fragments and treat damage caused by improper storage, and she said the restored volumes will benefit genealogy researchers and others who use county records. "This is a good thing for the county because there's still ... a lot of genealogy people that could still come in here, search the records," she said.
The Register of Deeds office invites residents to view the preserved registers at the county offices. No formal action or vote was recorded in the meeting.
The preservation work covered original marriage registers from 1842 through 1993 and was paid for from the county's automation enhancement and preservation fund supported by recording fees, according to Gilliard.
