>From the Harrisburg PA Patriot-News, Wed 7/15/09 To access Cumberland County's archive documents, log onto www.ccpa.net, and on the left tool bar, click "public records" and then "archives" Images of documents are reached by clicking "archival holdings". Camera icons indicate scanned images. **************************************************************** Cumberland Co. residents once owned scores of slaves, and local taxpayers footed the bill for illegitimate children in their midst. Anyone with a computer can now journey back to that era, thanks for the crew at the county archives. Slave owner records, "bastardy bonds", prison calendars and all sorts of other archaic stuff have been posted on the county's website. Those papers aren't just old and yellowed. They're interesting. "Cumberland County has a long and rich history. This is an effort to preserve it, " information technology director Jerry Wilkes said. Barbara Bartos, county archivist, said more than 12,000 documents are online as part of a long-term project to inventory the county's documentary holdings. Some handwritten papers date from the county's founding in 1750 when it was part of the British colony of Pennsylvania and stretched to modern-day Pittsburgh. The slave returns were mandated by a 1780 law, Bartos said, and list the owners, names and often the ages of slaves who worked in the county's homes, farms, and factories until slavery died out locally in the early 1840s. Pension applications for the Revolutionary War veterans are on file from 1820 to 1838, when those vets would have been very old soldiers, she said. Bastardy bonds list municipal support for illegitimate children, Bartos said. The insolvent debtor petitions from 1750 to 1799 are echoes of misery. "Two hundred fifty years ago, if you couldn't pay your debts, you were thrown in prison," said Merri Lou Schaumann, who is scanning in the papers. Other documents soon to be on the site include county "estimates" - budgets - grand jury reports, voter lists and hawkers and peddlars license applications, Bartos said. *************************************************************** Pass this on to others if you wish. Sue Marcus