State Grant Will Help Town Clerk

Preserve Historic Town Records

By Steve Bigham

Town Clerk Cindy Simon enjoys pulling out old books full of town records from the vault in her office. Some of them date back as far as 1711 and visitors, especially young ones, always seem to get a kick out of how old they are.

“It helps give them gain perspective on how old something is and that we still do a lot of things in this office that were done 200 years ago,” she explained.

For example, the town clerk’s vault is home to one book entitled “Records of Earmarks of Creatures,” which contains the various earmarks from each registered cow in town. Today, of course, the town clerk’s office is in charge of dog licensing. There is also a book entitled “Bill of Death” from the 1800s, which includes the names of various Newtown residents who died and the dates of their deaths. It also includes the manner in which they died. Causes include “teething,” “old age,” and “rheumatism.”

These old municipal records are a vital part of the history of Newtown. Some of them are like diaries of the town, recording everything from election and town meeting results to appointments and resignations. They are treasures from the past, telling a story of what went on long ago. The pages have long since turned yellow and the paper has become worn and brittle. Still, much of it is legible and the town clerk wants to preserve the journals forever.

Using money from a state grant and from local surcharges, the volumes will be preserved and restored at the conservation laboratories of Joseph J. Marotti Company of Milton, Vermont.

The treatment calls for the volumes to be disbound and text blocks carefully pulled. Sheets will then be “de-acidified” and mended by an appropriate method. Finally, the sheets will be encapsulated in Mylar D archival grade polyester film capsules. The volumes will also be placed on microfilm.

Records identified for treatment meet several criteria including poor condition, intrinsic historical value, legal value, permanent retention requirement, and irreplaceable information resource. On site evaluation and testing of the documents by the Marotti Company revealed that the records have deteriorated from centuries of acid hydrolysis and handling.

In July 1999, a new state law authorized town clerk staff members statewide to charge $3 for each recorded land record. Of that, $2 went to the state to be deposited in a historic document preservation fund, which will be returned to the municipalities through grants this summer. The other $1 stays in town for similar purposes.

“This is now the first cycle for town clerks to apply for the grant. The state will give us back some grant money,” said Mrs Simon, who expects to be awarded the money in late summer.

The town had its vital records preserved in the early 1990s.