Augusta County receives grant to restore documents dating back to 1740

AUGUSTA COUNTY, Va. (WHSV) - A grant of nearly $50,000 will restore eight Augusta County historical volumes dating back to the 1740s.

The documents contain information on items such as marriages, deaths and deeds. The grant comes from the Library of Virginia, in conjunction with the Virginia Court Clerks’ Association.

Augusta County’s Clerk of Circuit Court Steve Landes said restoring the documents will allow people to access these records in Augusta County and around the world.

“With every new record that is preserved or conserved, or a grant that we get, we also digitize the records and we’re uploading those to an online archive portal,” Landes said.

The covers of the books will also make it easier to understand what’s inside.

“We also have newer covers that are easy for the public to use and actually find, and again that digital version will be out there as well,” Landes said.

Additionally, each page can be taken out to make copies. Since the information is often used for genealogy and family records, people may want to take a copy home with them.

“You can actually take the pages out if we need to look at them more closely or if we need to make an image, that makes it much easier,” Landes said.

Landes said the grant came at a good time because a former restoration process is doing more harm than good.

“For these books in particular, these volumes, there was older process that was used in the ‘30s up until the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, what was called cellulite acetate. It is actually destroying the original records, so we need to have them done,” Landes said.

He said they expect the process to take three to six months.

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