Documenting the past

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LEWISTOWN - The Mifflin County Register and Recorder just completed phase two of restoring and filing old estate documents that date back to the late 1780's.

The restoration project began in 2006 when a $5,000 grant was awarded to the Mifflin County Register and Recorder from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to file and restore old estate documents.

Phase one of the project was the process of filing the documents and scanning them into the computer system in order to organize and restore them.

The process began with the unfolding of the estates, which are often bound together with glue, straight pins, ribbons, paper fasteners or threads. They must be handled very carefully so that they stay as preserved as they can be, said Barbara Stringer, of the Mifflin County Register and Recorder.

After the documents are completely unfolded, they are filed away into an index system and accessed by either estate name or estate number. Then, they are transported to Ebensburg, where they are scanned into the computer system by Infocon Corporation. A DVD is then created so that the documents can be transferred and accessed at the register's office.

Then, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission receives copies of the files.

"(It requires) diazo and silver microfilm sets (of the documents) to be put on file," Stringer's final grant report stated.

In 2007, another $5,000 grant was awarded by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to begin phase two. Phase two was an ongoing continuation of phase one, in which more documents were unfolded, filed accordingly and scanned. In phase two, 5,278 estates were completed, which is 2,639 more from the first phase, Stringer said.

With the documents scanned on the computer, they are kept as good, clean copies and can be looked at without crumbling or falling apart, Stringer said.

"These documents are vital to archivists, attorneys and genealogists," she said.

Mifflin County Register and Recorder has applied for a third grant from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to continue the restoration process. As long as grants are received, the process will continue, Stringer said.

In the future, plans include potentially making the estate information available to users from home by putting them on a server. However, these plans are very far in advance and not confirmed yet, Stringer said.

Originally, the estate documents had been indexed alphabetically and then filed numerically. During that time, documents were processed differently than they are today and fewer people were opening estate documents, Stringer said.

But now, it's important to preserve the documents and make them easily accessible because they are a piece of Mifflin County history and are unique to its residents, Stringer said.

"Without the preservation, the records will be lost," she added.