NCBLADEN-L Archives
Archiver > NCBLADEN > 2004-03 > 1078584850
From: "Lee Ponder" <>
Subject: Re: [NCBLADEN-L] Old Bladen County Court Records seen at a recent trip to Bladen County Court House
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 09:54:10 -0500
References: <00a801c3fb5f$2a8db220$5f5bfea9@hppav> <001301c40307$e0f518f0$7901a8c0@downstairs> <003001c4032f$8a6d9480$5f5bfea9@hppav>
Dee,
If someone would head the organization, perhaps a Bladen Co. historical or genealogical group I am sure there are enough descendants of Bladen Co NC families that a lot of donations would be sent in and if an actual call for volunteers to type and put on disc or CD batches of records I have no doubt that there would be many who would agree to handle small batches and if payment of postage and insurance could not be covered by donations I feel many would be glad to pay postage and insurance on the batches they typed. I certainly could devote a number of hours a week to such a worthwhile project and I expect I am just one among many.
It seems to me all that is required is someone in Bladen Co to manage the project.
I suspect a number of volunteers would come from the Thames/Tims Family Association.
Lee Ponder
Clyde, NC
Check out http://www.Thames-Tims.org.
----- Original Message -----
From: Dee Thompson
To:
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 11:00 PM
Subject: Re: [NCBLADEN-L] Old Bladen County Court Records seen at a recent trip to Bladen County Court House
John,
Four (?) years ago when we were in Bladen for a visit and planned
meeting with a number of people on this List Elizabeth Turner took us
to her "office" in the basement of the courthouse. There were three
rooms off a central room ( that had glass cases with some valuable
memorabilia). The three rooms were literally stacked to the ceilings
with records and boxes and ledgers, loose papers - all stuff that Lib
prayed would be organized at some point. The problem as I remember
her explanation was that the Bladen County Historical Society could
not afford to pay anyone to type up all the stacks of records even if
the Society could afford to publish them. I bet the information in
those rooms would solve all of our problems that have roots in Bladen.
People had send in countless Family and Bible records that no one has
ever seen. Lib can't do it and no one else seems to have a solution.
You could tell how defeated Lib felt but she only works a day or so a
week and is certainly not paid. No one is. I asked her if it were
possible that we each (perhaps 2 or 3 at a time) could take a week or
two of vacation and take laptops into that area to start the process
of transcribing these priceless records. Bob and I told her we would
be honored to pay for the publication of a few volumes but she said
the problem was the transcribing - tedious work, expensive work, and
no one to do it. I think that unless these records are in a bound
form there is no place for them to be safe and still be available to
the public. Therein lies the problem. They have to have help and at
some point they have to let those of us who cherish this stuff in
there to help, no matter how nervous it makes them. Perhaps a court
reporter might facilitate the speed of transcription. Maybe we could
beg a community college or even one of the larger colleges to take on
these rooms as a project. We personally are willing to do anything at
all to get those stacks in print.
I imagine within 10 minutes of reading this email Allen Johannes will
be firing off an email to us all. He has raged against this situation
since we learned of it.
There has to be something we all can do. A fabulous solution
(naturally it's just my opinion) would be for each of us interested in
this to pay for the shipping and insurance of a stack of these records
to our home for us to type up and return to BCHS in a form ready for
publication. I know the risk but what will become of the contents of
these three rooms if nothing is done?
Now that this elephant-in-the-living-room has been noticed lets not
pretend these records won't still be in those rooms fifty years from
now.
Much love to you all,
Dee
For details on the reference sources used for lookups, refer to this
link:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncbladen/lookups.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Johnson" <>
To: <>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 6:16 PM
Subject: [NCBLADEN-L] Old Bladen County Court Records seen at a recent
trip to Bladen County Court House
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