Rutherford County Archives Spring 2005 Update
By Kevin Cason
Over the past months, the staff and volunteers at the Rutherford County Archives have continued to make significant contributions to improve the archives.
As an on-going effort to benefit users of the archives, Graduate Assistants Jeff Sellers and Kevin Cason completed two indexes for the chancery court loose records. One index covers the chancery court cases from 1940-1985. Each index is alphabetized by the last name of the plaintiff and also provides the name of the defendant.
In addition to the chancery court loose records index, Kevin prepared an index for the death records of Rutherford County from the years 1925-1939. Death records include the name of the deceased, date of death, cause of death, and sometimes the town where the person died. For more information on these new research aids please contact the archives or come and visit the archives.
We have also been doing some preservation and conservation for items in the archives. Some of the conservation efforts that have been completed include copying records on acid-free paper to preserve the original copies of the marriage records from 1881-1889, as well as copying record books 12 and 24 that contain wills, probate information and inventories of estates from the 19th century. Currently, we are re-foldering, boxing and removing metal from the chancery court records from 1979.
While the staff and the volunteers continue to improve the intellectual and physical control of the records in the archives, we also continue to work on the new archives building project. In February and in March, the archives committee met to discuss the design and floor plans for the new archives facility. The plans for the building include offices for staff, a reading room for visitors, storage facilities for the records, and a conservation lab. In addition to designing the layout of the building, the archives committee prepared furniture plans for each of the rooms and discussed the need for high-density shelving for the new facility.