Jeanne Barton tried to forward this to the Neville List earlier, but her message was either an attachment or in something other than text format. Rootsweb surname lists cannot accept attachmentss, and all information must be in straight text format. I have reformatted her original message to make it acceptable to the Neville List on Rootsweb. Glenn Gohr (Neville List Manager) [email protected] ___________________________________ From: Jeanne Barton * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] Attachment: mime \ Created: Unknown FORWARD, Original message follows ------- Date: Monday, 21-Dec-98 07:03 AM From: James H Granger \ Internet: ([email protected]) To: Jeanne Barton \ PRODIGY: (ELXC78A) Subject: Re: Fw: [IMMI-GRAND-L] Virginia land records Jeanne, Here is the text of the article, as sent to me by another list subscriber. Jim Historic Land Records Deeded to Fairfax. Documents Found in Alexandria Include Transactions Dating to 17th Century By Sylvia Moreno Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 19, 1998; Page B10. An Alexandria lawyer has donated thousands of old Fairfax County land records-- covering transactions that date back to the 17th century -- to the county government, which will make them available to the public. The 23,000 files were moved this week from the law office of Bernard Corbett to the Fairfax County courthouse. Corbett bought the records from the law firm of Davis and Ruffner, which specialized in handling real estate transfers, when he purchased the law firm's building in Old Town Alexandria 1 1/2 years ago and moved into its offices. Brian Conley, an archivist for the Fairfax County Public Library who examined the records before Corbett donated them, said they include abstracts of Colonial documents that will be of value to anyone researching the history of Fairfax's neighborhoods and subdivisions. The collection includes about 20,000 files on individual properties and 3,000 files on subdivisions. The files that deal with the creation of Fairfax's subdivisions "will be extremely useful for those doing community histories," Conley said. "If you have a development with 300 homes, for instance, instead of tracing 300properties, this will have the history for the entire subdivision. This speeds that process up immensely. "The donated documents also will help those doing title searches, Conley said. The files will be catalogued by the Fairfax County court clerk's office, and those of historical significance will be set aside in a special collection at the courthouse. Corbett said he plans to donate to the City of Alexandria another 18,000 files covering property transfers in the Old Town area. That donation will occur in another year or two, after city officials have come up with the space to store and display the documents, Corbett said. Together, the old Fairfax and Alexandria records were in 270 file cabinets that were taking up more than 1,000 square feet in his office building, Corbett said. "In my case, it was taking up a lot of valuable space," he said. "But what we mainly wanted was to put them in the hands of the whole county to take advantage of." Corbett's brother, Christopher, a Chantilly businessman, is a co-owner of the records. The Corbetts will seek an income tax write-off for donating the documents and are in the process of having their value determined by a professional appraiser, Bernard Corbett said.