BlankMany of you on the list have written at one time or another about the lost records in Wayne County, Tennessee. It may be a bit presumptuous of me, but I thought I'd give you a record of what happened to those records since I may well be the only person living who knows. It has been brought to my attention that I didn't have any of this written down, and as we all know, nothing in life is certain, especially memory. I will address the main records groups used by most genealogists by the offices in which they originated. County Court Clerk -- Marriage records. The marriage records for Wayne County, Tennessee survive from 1857 to the present. The main book from 1857 to 1898 is actually only half of the record. It is actually the "minister's return" or "license return" record book, which recorded whether or not the marriage had actually taken place. There are a few scattered bond books (or what we would call "license application") in existence between 1881 and 1898. What happened to the earlier (1820-1857) marriage records? Many of the original loose marriage bond and returns were lost over time and neglect. The rest were burned when the courthouse burned in January 1972. They had been stored in the attic of the 1905 courthouse in boxes along with other records and served as fuel for the fire. I personally know they were there because the last two weeks in December 1971 I worked in that attic, along with Mr. Charles Gallaher, sorting through all those bundles separating the original marriage bonds covering the period 1820 through the 1890's. Only a Xerox copy of one bond/license/return from 1854 survived. And that was because it was the first one found during the initial search over Thanksgiving holidays in 1971 and I took it to Florence, AL to have it copied. There wasn't a single available copier in all of Wayne County (as far as I know) at the time. The original bond (application) books (Volumes A-I?) covering the period 1820 - 1878 or 1881 were, according to lore, stored in the attic of the 1905 courthouse. In 1918, someone left the trapdoor to the clock tower open. It rained in causing the ceiling of the courtroom (which was directly beneath the attic storage area and the clock tower) to collapse. The books were so badly water damaged it was said (and I've not found record of this) that the County Court ordered those records taken out on the Eagle creek turnpike and burned as they were no longer usable. The "minister's return" book for the period 1820 - 1857 apparently was still in existence as late as the 1920's, possibly even as late as the 1930's. The late John F. Morrison, Jr. of Lawrenceburg, TN whose father, John F. Morrison Sr. had been County Judge in the late 1890's and early 1900's stated that this errant book was about 13" tall by 9" wide and approximately 2" thick, half-bound with a leather spine and blue paperboard covers. Mr. Morrison had worked for his father before moving to Lawrenceburg and was familiar with all records in the courthouse as an attorney, historian and genealogist. What happened to that first book of marriage returns is unknown. It probably walked out of the courthouse in someone's satchel. That basically covers the marriage records. Wills, Inventories and Settlements & County Court Minutes 1820-1848 Who knows? I've never been able to find a definitive answer to this although I believe that they were destroyed between 1863 and 1865 when Waynesboro was basically abandoned and the courthouse was open for vandals, hogs, chickens and cows. Although where those hogs, chickens and cows came from in 1864 is a mystery since Col. Capron of the 16th Illinois Cave. stated in a telegram to Gen. Thomas in Nashville that he couldn't find enough forage to feed his troops. If the records from 1848 to the present survive, one would assume that those earlier records would have also survived. I did not find them among the shelves of record volumes in the attic of the 1905 courthouse, although there were JP docket books and other records there from the 1820-1850 period, all of which were destroyed in the fire and had never been microfilmed. Registrar's office (deeds, etc) These records are complete from 1820 to the present. Interesting that these records survived neglect, war and fire. But land records will survive where almost nothing else will. Circuit Court Clerk The earliest surviving record book in this office is a docket book covering the period 1836-1842. The actual Court Minutes begin in 1851 (and we are presently transcribing and publishing that first book). We do have court testimony concerning what happened to the earlier volumes of minutes. Matthew J. Sims, who was elected Circuit Court Clerk in 1866, testified in 1867 that the former clerk (the one holding office in 1861) had removed the books from the office and carried them home where they were lost. He also testified that when Waynesboro was abandoned in 1864 that the courthouse had been ransacked and the records scattered and destroyed. I still wonder if some soldier in either the Union or Confederate Army, passing through Waynesboro in 1863-5, might not have taken one of those books, or some of those loose papers and those originals are now sitting in someone's attic or trunk, untouched since that time. We will never know. Hopefully they were not used by some clerk who hurriedly grabbed a handful of papers or sheets from the book as he hastily ran to the nearby outhouse. Those loose circuit court records which survived the 1972 fire were either hauled off to the land fill or bulldozed into the fill around the current courthouse. At least that is the information supplied by several people who managed to salvage some of those loose records while the bulldozers were working. I know of few case files and other loose circuit court records which survived the 1972 fire since the Circuit Court Clerk's office was on the second floor of the 1905 courthouse and sustained the greatest damage from the fire. Clerk and Master's Office The Clerk and Master is an officer of the court appointed by the Chancellor of the Chancery Court. The Chancery Court (or Equity Court) was not created as an independent court in the county until 1851. Prior to that time, individuals wishing to file an equity case could file in any Chancery Court in the state of Tennessee.(that isn't exactly true since the laws governing the place of filing changed through the years between 1796 and 1848. You must know judicial history in Tennessee in order to determine which Chancery Court would have been appropriate for filing an equity suit and I'm afraid that for this message it would be too complicated to address) We have complete record volumes from 1861 to the present. Evidence suggests that the sitting Clerk and Master in 1862 absconded with the earlier minute and docket books and they were never returned. It is therefore possible that those earlier books still exist but are held privately. All surviving loose Chancery Court files between 1851 and 1920 have been cleaned and microfilmed. The earlier decades of the court (1851-1871) have incomplete files. And even some of the later cases are missing or have parts missing. A rather large bundle (measuring approximately 9" in diameter) of affidavits in a 1918 case disappeared from the courthouse basement storage room as late as 1990. Another set of exhibits in a case from 1909 disappeared between 1982 and 1984. Trustee's Office The earliest surviving tax records for Wayne County are 1836 and 1838. But these are only copies which were sent by the Wayne County Trustee to the Tennessee Secretary of State in 1836 and 1838. No original tax record prior to 1873/4 survives. We do have a complete record from 1873/4 to the present. I do not know what happened to those tax record books prior to 1873. I did not find them in the attic of the 1905 courthouse and they were certainly not available in the Trustee's office, otherwise they would have been microfilmed in 1966-8. I've never heard anything about the record books for 1820-1872. I was always told they were destroyed when the courthouse was burned in the civil war. At least that was what I was told when I first started researching in the courthouse in 1966. I didn't learn until later that the courthouse in Wayne County had never burned!! At least not until 1972. Again, neglect and carelessness probably were the cause of the loss. School Commission/Board of Education Here we open a can of worms. In 1974, Mr. Gallaher and I located the old School Commission minutes 1866 - 1908 in an office in the Bank of Waynesboro building. These had not been microfilmed and were on wooden shelves and in piles on the floor of that corner office. Sometime between October 1974, when I left Wayne County, and January 1982 when I returned, those books and other records disappeared. I've been told by a former Bank of Waynesboro president that they were hauled off to the land fill and I've also been told that they may have been moved elsewhere. So far, no one seems to have any definitive knowledge of what happened to those records. The Minutes of the Board of Education 1913 to present do survive and are available. I could go on, but that covers the major courthouse records. Sometime soon I'll reminisce about what was actually stored in the attic of the 1905 courthouse. I'll try to do that soon before my memory fades. The last time I was there was 30 years ago, afterall. Edgar Edgar D. Byler, III Editor, Wayne County Historian Co-coordinator, Wayne County, TN Genealogy and History Page http://www.netease.net/wayne/