Sunday, December 30, 2001
County records find temporary home at the jail
By Jefferson Wolfe
Staff Writer
jwolfe@advertiser-tribune.com
From the university archives to the jail to the library.
Some Seneca County records dating back to the 1800s are being brought back to the county. They will be stored temporarily at the jail upon their return from Bowling Green.
The records have been in storage at Bowling Green State University's center for archival collections. When they will be returned has not been determined.
Dep. David Magers and the jail's work crew will bring the records from Bowling Green, said Sheriff Tom Steyer. Steyer also is a member of the Seneca County Genealogical Society.
'There's some interesting records stored there," he said.
There are records that date into the 1840s. Some may be even older, Steyer said.
The documents include naturalization records, common pleas court records, county home records and prosecutor's records. There also is an 1878 county jail construction report.
"We're going to kind of sort them out and see which ones we want to microfilm," Steyer said.
The records will be stored temporarily at the jail, but the long-term plan is to use the old library building at the intersection of Market and Jefferson streets, County Commissioner Kenneth Estep said.
That building houses the probate and juvenile court. It has enough space for 20-25 more years worth of records, he said.
The probate and juvenile court would move to a new building on Market Street, Estep said. The new building will be on the site of the Hanson Building, which was destroyed by fire about a year ago.
The genealogical society had written a letter to the commissioners asking for a storage facility and a centralized management program.
The society did not know the commissioners had planned to use the former library and court building, the society's Becky Hill said. She is very much in favor of the use of the library to store the records.
"I'm hoping if they're going to do something like that and put it all in one building, they'd have somebody to take care of them," she said.
Some counties have a records management center with full-time people working in them to maintain and assist the public in the use of the records.
The commissioners are planning to hire a part-time coordinator and staff the facility with volunteers.