160-Year-Old Documents Intentionally Destroyed in Franklin County, N.C.
stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com
stumblingintheshadowsofgiants.wordpress.com
EVEN IF you have paid your mortgage in full, in many cases, there will not be clear title to the property - and thus, you cannot legally own the property.
Title Insurance companies know this, as do most banks. This is why there is a ~$70 "Title Clearance and/or Reconveyance Fee" that has to be paid at the end of the mortgage - by the borrower - to the Title Insurance company.
America has a huge backlog of uncleared title. In some counties, there are 2 or 3 or even up to 12 generations of title to get cleared - from the earliest title transfer, to the very latest - before someone can have clear title to their property.
So, like the original author of this article, I suspect that there was some Title Lineage evidence in all that stack of documents, which someone didn't want to have discovered .. for some reason.
The lesson learned: ALWAYS CLEAR TITLE ON PROPERTY YOU INTEND TO PURCHASE.
Which says the records were burned because they were full of mold, a health hazard, and had already been designated for destruction in 1964.
This wasn't a nifty little storage room full of rare old materials, it was pile of boxes in a basement with a leaky pipe.
It's sad for sure that a few really cool documents were lost, but they needed to be destroyed to remove the mold threat -- I doubt it was economically feasible to clean or restore the lot of them, and it'd have been dangerous to have folks rummage through them to find things worth restoration (can you remove mold from a ledger book?).
the records were burned because they were full of mold, a health hazard
Surely historians, librarians and archaeologists have faced mold before and have methods to deal with it.
Even in the very worst case scenario, all we need is a hazmat suit and a digital camera and a couple of hours so the data isn't 100% lost -- as it was lost in Franklin county.
The mold talk sounds like a petty excuse. Like we live in a world with no protection masks.
This is mold, not Fukushima debris
"How much does it cost to rescue and restore" could be a relevant question. Especially considering that the state tagged all of it for destruction 50 years ago, I doubt they were keen to spend money on hiring a team of archivists to swoop down and resurrect ledgers of old tax receipts.
Moldy old books generally get thrown away or burned. Doesn't mean there's some great conspiracy to cover up land grabs and political intrigue, as was the supposition I was providing counterpoint to.
I mean, if only there were some national umbrella group of archives that had entire departments of people devoted to techniques for preventing and restoring damaged materials, who published their findings on paper and online for free, who hold regular disaster planning and archives management conferences, who promote best practices, who are extremely active on social media and could have helped if only the state had bothered to ask them about the mold situation OH WAIT THERE IS http://www.archives.gov/preservation/emergency-prep/disaster...
. . .
(All that being said, I do agree that the key factor in this travesty was probably ignorance rather than malice, as it is in so many situations. But given the state's history and the unusualness of this act, the blogger's skepticism is definitely warranted. And just to reiterate, the Heritage Society was willing to take the records in for free. They were the initial volunteers cleaning out that yucky basement, too. I don't think even the state is trying to play the "expensive" card.)
The blog post says they'd secured space and funding for restoration; it's curious then why they left everything in the basement if they had the space set up. And, calling the state archivists (knowing they were out of their league) suggests they were far out enough that reading SOPs and tweeting folks wasn't going to cut it.
I can certainly see a case where the state group, with what can't be unlimited funds, did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that it wasn't worth it. That makes sense to me -- maybe I'm not intimate enough with the industry to know what really happens.
I'm surprised with the hostility here; I acknowledge that your profession is very important to you, but seriously, this isn't an attack.
Nope, it's purely a FUD question. Considering questions like this may be part of balanced reasoning, but you need to ask them to yourself first and spend a modicum of time thinking lest you just help derail the truth over a non-concern.
How much does it cost? Camera + N99 mask + shower -> $100 total
Although you'd probably want to opt for the deluxe package - scanner + cartridge respirator + long hot shower -> $300 total
I'm sure multiple members of an "archival society" would have individually come up with these resources if that's what was required. And I'm sure Google would have happily hauled, scanned, and properly disposed of the records just to put them behind their adwall.
And to the extent that there was a higher figure for institutional overhead, then before just being destroyed, there should have been a period of public notice and access for a volunteer can-do team to take the simple approach.
The two are not mutually exclusive. It appears that it was both.
The procedure moved along a bit too efficiently to really satisfy the basis of either side of the story.
The "mold threat" argument is so utterly vacuous -- it's hard to imagine that anyone making it can really be taking themselves seriously. And this pooh-poohing of the documents as being merely "cool" reflects a staggering degree of ignorance about the value of primary documents in historical (and legal) research.
At the same time... it's not hard to imagine county bureaucrats thinking pretty much exactly in these terms. "Wha, a buncha photographs? Old title papers? Whoze goona be innersted in that? Someones gonna get SICK from all that ICKY mold and we might get SUED!"
Yep -- that must have been exactly what they were thinking.
As is obvious from the archivist who has gleefully and thoroughly lambasted me upon her holy pike of preservation persecution, the layman may know painfully little about the costs and logistics involved in preserving such materials.
In title theory states, when you mortgage the property, the mortgagee holds title until the mortgage is paid off.
In the US, ownership of real property tends to be more complex than that, and that's what really drives the need for clear title.
The conveyance of real property is further complicated because it is regulated primarily at the state level and there are many and varied laws among the states.
In general, due to their heritage in English Common Law and origin at a time when land was granted by the sovereign, real property is conveyed with all previous restrictions on its use and disposal intact [except in such cases where the restrictions are illegal, such as prohibitions on the sale of the property to persons of particular races, religions, etc.].
This means that a violation of a particular covenant [deed restriction] gives the person conveying title [or their heirs or assigns] the right to take back the title. It is misleading to think of the ownership of real property as consistent with Lockian notions of private property. Restrictions on digital media and software licenses are probably better analogies, and it may be worth noting that these restrictions are not unprecedented in so far as real-property law provides precedent.
Ultimately, the title to real property is never clear - you can't prove that no claims exist only that none have been found.
And that's what's motivating the purported goings on in Franklin County. For all the years they were locked up, those records were not included in any title search. The existence and use of such records would undoubtedly slow the sale of real property in the area. Furthermore, the likelihood that claims against title could be brought forth against current title holders increases significantly.
Given that the records date from the antebellum period, the 800 pound gorilla is not so much the descendants of former slaves as Native Americans. North Carolina was only a generation or so off the frontier and less than that from the Trail of Tears, and while the heirs and assigns of individual former slaves are fragmented, the heirs and assigns of the various Native American nations such as the Cherokee are organized and have legal standing under Federal law to challenge property title. [1]
[1] In the 1980's the Seminole Tribe acquired a reservation that was subsequently developed into Tampa's Hard Rock Casino in exchange for giving up a claim upon land in Tampa's Central Business District where a Native American gravesite was unearthed. http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-commentary/from-graves-to-o...
If record of that allodial title is destroyed or lost, then you will have a difficult/impossible time proving you own your land.
Since then, the story has gone viral on Twitter and is now back on HN as a post in its own right. And yet there were people like me who knew (and tweeted!) about the impending records destruction through the genealogy grapevine before the burning -- but we felt powerless to do anything about it.
If ever there were an example of how important it is for us genealogy/archives folks to break out of our little world and interface more with the general public more often, this would be it. I'm so glad people here, and on Twitter, seem to really grasp what a big deal stories like this are, and how shameful it is to have destroyed records.
Now, pull up a chair and let me explain to you all about the worrying trend of privatization and commercialization of public archives and public data, or the saga of the SSDI closure...
Not exactly the "full story" when it omits the facts that support differing conclusions. That's sort of the opposite of "full story".
Some moderating details:
* Documents were damaged by a mold that is hazardous to health
* State archivist claims the documents were of "low historical value"
* Archivist claims some were confidential, and couldn't be legally released to 3rd party
http://www.wral.com/historians-lament-destruction-of-frankli...
EDIT: The article speculates a cover-up. I'm speculating a make-this-messy-problem-go-away action, perhaps by someone who'd have to deal with the mess as opposed to someone who'd be embarrassed by it. On the other hand, I'm not denying that it's a cover-up.
I love it.
Personally I believe these records showed that the Union had assistance from their extra-terrestrial masters and held the documentation of a coverup after the Civil War.
Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
There exist a big culture and history of land theft in the Americas by the white upper class from the 16th century until present time. Now there exist no evidence of extra-terrestrials.
So I personally belief the post's explanation over yours.
No one cares if your great-great-great-great grandfather was a slave owner. If they did, it would come up far more often.
I can also counter your adage with another:
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
The simplest answer is actually stupidity. Someone(s) didn't know what they had and just freed up space that was taken up by records that were long past their retention period.
This sounds like something from a partisan left-wing political tract. Do you have any references?
Of course, land was taken from the Native Americans and brought under the white man's legal system, at which point I no longer believe the claim. The US is basically a country of laws, not of men, or at least has been for most of its history.
I don't know what the threshhold is for "a big culture of" something, but I suspect the truth of it is that it clearly falls short of that.
This kind of claim is also reminiscent of the situation in Israel, which is also left-wing/anti-semitic minefield of misinformation.
Which is exactly what should happen to those people.
More information, please. Otherwise this isn't much more than a rumor from a backyard gossip.
It is indeed possible that the cost to restore these books may have been prohibitive, far out of proportion to their historical value, but the cost to preserve them was certainly not. All they would need to do is freeze them. It deactivates the mold, and prevents continuing harm. The books could sit there, not hurting anyone, until someone cared enough to restore them.
* Late May, early June, 2013 – Work began, using a few volunteers,...
* August 5, 2013 ... A request was made to The United Way to supply the Society with computers and Steve Trubilla donated a scanner/copier.
They had months while they could (even just to make the reviews easier) simply scan everything. Page by page while going through the boxes. They didn't have to retype, OCR, describe or do anything else to the documents. Just copy and preserve.
Now they're caught in a disaster situation without a backup. (I'm not disappointed with people doing this, I'm sure they did what they could / thought was important at the time. Just the whole situation is depressing. It's like almost every single "we lost all our data" story out there.)
They were probably worried about damaging the books or pages. They had no idea of what was coming, so why would they damage their newfound discovery just to make a bad copy?
(Usually, backup stories are good morality plays because the only cost of backup are time and money; but if you had a 0.01% chance of corrupting both copies of a file every time you copied it over to the backup drive...)
From the article, it sounds as if they were trying to follow sound archival practices - e.g. contacting the State Bureau. There was no reason for them to know they were in a race against the clock, and it is absurd to propose that they should have acted in such a way or to violated sound archival practice.
This is absolutely the typical case. Archiving various kinds of documents is hard. Professional archivists generally have a Masters degree in Library Science or a similar field. When there are many kinds of records (paper, photo, etc) it is difficult to start the process and handle things correctly.
Even if they don't legally stand up, the photos would cause plenty of publicity issues.
I can understand a reluctance to actually open any folded documents in dockets that have been stored in damp conditions and left for 100+ years. I've recently scanned and photographed some documents relating to my family from the 1880s, these have been stored in a tin box and were very dry and fragile. We are just keeping them in the box at present!
Prove me wrong. You can’t. They destroyed the records.
They are two separate legal issues: responsibility for a criminal offense and rightful title to a particular piece of real property.
One way of thinking about the difference is that one can be inherited and the other can't [currently]. In legal parlance, criminal v civil tort.
When homes have mold issues, great time and money is expended to clean and repair the homes; they don't instantly demolish them. Why? The value. So it was determine this mold was so bad, and the documents so inconsequential, that instant incineration was the only answer?
What's interesting is that the poster above simply keeps asserting, over and over, that it was "because of the mold, ya know" as if the surprise incineration was an obvious, necessary result of the situation. Clearly it wasn't.
Prove me wrong. You can't. They destroyed the documents.