Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Start your journey into the past at the Archives
Let me tell you a few things I learned during a recent visit to the Lawrence County Archives:
1. Etta Stockard Crawford was the very first Lawrence County female to cast a vote in an regular election, held shortly after women were granted the right on August 18, 1920. She paid a poll tax of $2.00 for the privilege.
2. The Lawrence County Tax Assessor once kept track of, and collected taxes on, dogs. “Dog Tax Assessment” records from 1920 include the owner’s name and the name, breed, color, age and sex of their dog(s). The tax was $1 a year for male dogs and $3 for females. (Remember Petey from the old television program “The Little Rascals?” Archives Director Kathy Niedergeses says the Gang always tried to keep him hidden because they hadn’t paid his tax.)
3. On file along with early wedding certificates are bonds that grooms took out, promising to pay if a legal reason that would’ve prevented the marriage was found after the ceremony - he might already be married, for instance. There are also records of local divorces from as far back as the early 1800s, something that required case-by-case approval from the State Legislature until the 1840s.
4. The Lawrence County Archives is a gold mine for anyone with any degree of interest in history.
The Archives opened in 1988 in the basement of the Lawrenceburg Post Office. Niedergeses, who had done family research for herself and others, worked as a volunteer and was hired as Director in 1989. She is also, officially, Lawrence County Historian.
Records that had been transferred from one Lawrence County Courthouse to the next (we have had three) were moved to the new Archives from the basement of our current Courthouse, the Old Jail Museum and the Board of Education, which was then located on West Gaines. Big as the collection is, Niedergeses said, “We don’t know how much has been lost.” Some records were thrown in the landfill, and others became part of personal collections. Even though our first courthouse was spared by the Union (because their commander didn’t want to damage the nearby Mexican War monument), soldiers scattered records from it along city streets.
There are gaps in the collection, but what we have is really incredible. The Archives now has a permanent home on Highway 43 in Leoma where you can find:
*Tax records
*Land entry and survey books
*Land grant records
*Trust deeds
*County, quarterly, chancery, criminal and civil court minutes
*Deeds
*Early plat maps
*Railway right-of-way maps
*Wills
*Estate settlements and petitions to settle estates
*Records of marriage and divorce
*Early merchant licenses
*Photos of subjects ranging from Agriculture to Utilities
*Newspapers
*School Board, City of Lawrenceburg, and County Commission minutes
*And much, much more.
The Archives’ website is a good place to start any history exploration. It contains general information and offers details that can give you a head start on research projects. You can find, for instance, whether the Archives already has a file containing information about your family.
Several shelves at the Archives are filled with books about specific families and communities in our county and beyond. A collection of books by local authors and about Lawrence County are also available to purchase.
Local residents who have a passion for history have made things easier for other researchers. Nancy Crowder and Josephine Pickard spent many hours compiling obituaries from 1846 to 2015 into book form, and Jim Crowder produced an index for it. Wally Moore and Donna Ramsey developed a collection of Lawrence County High School graduating class photos from 1910 to 2011 that is also indexed by name.
Personal donations continue to upgrade the Archives collection. One recent contribution is a photo album of Lawrence County cotton gins. Like other photos there, they can be scanned and e-mailed to you, or reproduced for a small fee on the Archives’ photo-quality printer.
On the subject of photos, the deadline to submit your own for a new Lawrence County pictorial history book has been extended to the end of February. You can e-mail high-quality scanned images to lcarchives@lorettotel.net, or take them by the Archives where they will be scanned and returned to you.
And unless you think the Archives are only for those concerned with the past…Niedergeses helped bring State Archaeologists here when a Catholic Cemetery in Deerfield was in the path of the Highway 64 bypass construction. Its wooden crosses were destroyed in a long-ago fire, and time obliterated any sign of coffins or bodies. The small fragments that remained, such as jewelry, were re-interred in one grave at Lawrenceburg’s Calvary Cemetery.
There’s a lot to learn at the Lawrence County Archives. Those who don’t know history may not be doomed to repeat it, but they are definitely condemned to lead less interesting lives. Get your start on an endlessly fascinating topic at the Archives’ website, or visit Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
