Here is a followup, found on the Scotch-Irish-L list. -Marc McCune http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4660 -----Original Message----- From: Bryce Stevens [SMTP:BStevens@netstarcomm.net] Sent: Monday, June 29, 1998 3:29 PM To: Scotch-Irish-L@rootsweb.com Subject: CALL TO ARMS IN DISCARD Follow-up Kevin, and all: This follow- up came out a day after the discard alert. Apparently response was overwhelming. Before anyone writes to the newspaper or the county commissioners, I suggest you read this message, too. You may still wish to write, but I believe this will affect just what you say. Bryce Stevens Please bear with me for this last, long email. There was a third story published today, June 26, by the WV Times about Marion County, and to be fair, it should be available to the same people who have read the first two stories. It was, as follows: * * * * * By Theresa Haynes Times West Virginian Staff Writer FAIRMONT Local genealogists searching for an old marriage record or birth certificate do not need to go sifting through the trash. Marion County Clerk Janice Cosco said her department did not throw away any permanent records from the Jacobs building earlier this month when maintenance workers cleared away six BFI Dumpsters of outdated files and papers from the historic building. "Everything we are charged by law to keep was not thrown away," she said. "No permanent records, that I know of, were thrown away." Cosco, who has been the county's clerk for 18 years, said she still has original copies of wills, birth certificates, death certificates, deeds, marriage certificates, land transfers, voter registration records and county commission records dating back to the county's inception in 1842. She said her department discarded old fiscal records, pieces of paper recording every penny spent at the county clerk's office, and outdated universal consumer code slips, which record credit transactions. Cosco said she is legally responsible to save the receipt books for 10 years and the consumer code slips for seven years, but she boxed and stored the records for at least two decades. For years the Jacobs building housed these outdated records, but earlier this month Cosco gave maintenance workers permission to trash the papers including some receipt books dating back to 1920. The county clerk said she would have liked to save everything but there ust was not room to house it all. "The public needs to understand that in order to keep their precious records we have to have a place to put them," she said as she stood inside one of the courthouse's many fireproof vaults filled with old wills and birth, marriage and death records. "(Marion County Commissioner) Cody Starcher has gotten all kinds of flak over this, but Cody should get an award," she said. "He found the money to restore the Jacob's building so we could have a place to put the permanent records." Last year Starcher was instrumental in getting the state to approve transferring $330,000 from the jail improvement fund to renovate the dilapidated Jacobs building. When renovations are complete, the old building will be used for office space and record storage. Starcher, who is also overseeing the Jacobs building cleanup, said he did not sort through the five floors of piled papers and books, but allowed the county clerk, circuit clerk, prosecuting attorney and assessor to walk through the building and take what they wanted. Everything else was discarded. Local historians believe some records, including 10 leather-bound pre-Civil War Justice of the Peace books, were thrown away because no one in the courthouse set them aside to be kept. Because Justice of the Peace books are not considered permanent records, Starcher said the county could have thrown them away years ago. But the former Justice of the Peace said he does not know for sure if the Justice of the Peace books dating back to 1842 were destroyed because he does not know what the historical books look like or why anyone would want them. "I don't know why anyone would want to look at those anyway," he asked. "I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder." Starcher said even if historians thought the information in the books was valuable, the books themselves were damaged from years of sitting in a dusty, nearly abandoned building. "That building was burned three times and everything in there was rained on. Some of the windows were broken out," he said. "Anything in there was scarred, scratched or torn up." The county commissioner said the Jacobs building still is in such poor condition he is afraid to allow genealogists and historians to search through the remaining records at the old building. "We couldn't keep all five floors of junk and garbage and renovate that building," he said. "We thought we would do something better for the town and the county and renovate the building. That took precedence over a couple of books that might have been thrown away." * * * * * MY COMMENTS: First of all, thank each of you who have contributed your emails and letters in protest of the actions by the Marion County Commissioners. I was amazed at how quickly the masses responded despite our physical separation (this 'ole Internet is pretty good, eh?). The pressure we created was felt by all the local government, citizens and especially the county commissioners of Marion County. The jury is still out on whether all the materials that were dumped were, indeed, unrelated to the object of genealogy or historian researchers. I don't feel comfortable that their "definition" of what was thrown away excludes materials that would be of benefit to some! We imagined the worst, since Mr. Cody Starcher admitted there was not an inventory of what was tossed. With no inventory, we were all free to imagine what was in that pile, and Mr. Starcher can not prove us wrong. He has no idea he didn't toss some historical or cultural treasure, no matter how minor it may have been to him. This is a democracy, and we do have a right to be told before public records are thrown away. Our outrage continues to be about our paid officials making unilateral decisions such as was made. They should not be allowed to decide who to invite in to "take what they want" and then to decide to have the rest hauled away before anyone else could see it. It was Cody Starcher's secretive actions that raised the suspicions of the local Marion County historians and, eventually, the newspapers and then each of us. We were all outraged over Commissioner Starcher's arbitrary exercise of power, and we've done well to spotlight it! We have all acted in the spirit of the early American Revolutionaries (many of our ancestors) who demanded public officials be accountable to the public. As a friend said, "we showed up with Email pitchforks, and Cody didn't like it." Hopefully, our actions this week will serve to keep records that are left in Marion County and elsewhere preserved. Thank you again for helping to spotlight a wrongful action. If you should want to continue that pressure, that is up to you. An address list of the Marion County Commissioners is below: BOARD OFCOMMISSIONERS PRESIDENT, James E Sago (304-367-5400) 200 Jackson Street / Fairmont, WV 26554 Commissioner Cecily Enos (304-367-5400) 200 Jackson Street / Fairmont, WV 26554 Commissioner Cody Starcher (304-367-5400) 200 Jackson Street / Fairmont, WV 26554 Assessor Thomas Davis (304-367-5410) 200 Jackson Street / Fairmont, WV 26554 Circuit Clerk Barbara Core (304-367-5360) PO Box 1269 / Fairmont, WV 26554 County Clerk Janice Cosco (304-367-5440) PO Box 1267 / Fairmont, WV 26554 * * * * * Pam Mullinax E-Mail: pmullinax@mindspring.com