Washington Times-Herald, P. O. Box 471, Washington, IND  47501, (812)254-0480

Saturday, October 1, 2005 page 1  Volume 41, Number 105 (USPS 668-200) copyright 2005 Community Newspapers Holdings, Inc.

Reprinted with permission of the author (Laura Thigpen, Staff Writer) and editor (Melody Brunson).

" Old records hold history of County" by Laura Thigpen

        Like finding and fitting historic jigsaw-puzzle pieces, members of the genealogy committee of the Daviess County [Indiana] Historical Society spend hours gingerly sorting the charred and brittle remains of courthouse records.  For them it's not a chore. And in some ways it's more real than the contemporary computerized world they live in today.  "Most people seem to see their ancestors as cardboard cutouts," said Elizabeth Dowling, director of Washington's Carnegie Library, 300 W. Main St., and avid member of the committee. "I have immense respect for the people who lived here in the early years, and their lives are much more colorful and interesting somehow. In some ways their lives are more real to me than the people I know."Because they lived extraordinary lives, making do with what seems to the modern world as next to nothing. And in the records that committee member Richard Overton stumbled upon, he and Dowling, and committee chairman Debra Dougherty have found lists of belongings that often consisted of no more than a bedstead and a few plates. Or in one case, two peacocks and a bottle of cognac were all one man owned."They may have had only four or five items to keep house with," said Dougherty, who tries not to miss what has become a monthly foray into the past as genealogy buffs dig through the rows of metal boxes in the clerk's office in the courthouse, narrow holders full of papers illuminating the history of those who lived and made Daviess County a viable community. To help them log such past records, stored for decades in what is now her office, County Clerk Rosemary Abel keeps the courthouse open late one Tuesday out of the month, allowing members to go through, sort, copy and marvel at what they find. "For us it's like turning a kid loose in a toy store," laughed Dougherty, who added that her idea of a vacation would be pitching a tent in the courthouse lobby and spending a week exploring the boxed records that line Abel's office from ceiling to floor. Numbered, the boxes offer up all manner of tidbits from the past; tidbits that help "connect the threads that might never have been found any other way," Dowling said.  Like the original donation of land that made Washington ‹ then named Liverpool ‹ the county seat for the newly established Daviess County. Two adjacent parcels were given by Samuel Wilkins, who offered 32 acres, and Emanuel Vantrees, who gave 37 and a half acres, providing Washington with the 1817 beginning as the center for county business.  Then there's the bond issued for the first real jail built in 1830 for $398 and 87 and a half cents. Ten years later, an early jail inspection revealed the fireplace and floor in the debtor's room to be "insufficient" to the needs of those incarcerated there. The criminal's room, on the other hand, was found to be just fine.  "They're finding a lot of surprises," Abel said. "They found the war records that were used then instead of a census, and found a death record that's older than anything the county health department has."All finds are being microfilmed for courthouse storage, and copied for posterity. Original documents will be preserved by the historical society and genealogy committee.Which may keep future generations from having to sort through burned remnants of the past as committee members must do since a number of fires threatened to destroy all local records. And while they all agree that at least one of those fires leveled the courthouse, it's unclear reading various history books, exactly which fire did the most damage; the one in 1878 or the fire in 1891 that was reportedly the most devastating to date.Pictures in a pictorial history of the county show the flames of yet another fire, this one in 1927, which supposedly burned the courthouse to the ground, according to at least one history book, Dowling said, flipping through the pages of  Washington resident Rex Myer's detailed history of Daviess County. In the picture stands the courthouse, windows lit against a dark sky by flames, caught on celluloid by a zealous photographer.  "It's the past," said Deborah Kenworthy simply, properly suited to her job as the reference genealogy clerk at the library. "Those records may be the only ones that show they were even around here; that they even lived."And since much of the 1890 census was destroyed in a fire at the national archives, local fires were just that much more destructive since the war records that motivated the committee's monthly courthouse search are now often the only way to discover who lived here and when.Those records, too, may tell how they died."There was a lot of chronic diarrhea listed for veterans," Kenworthy said. "And there are soldiers listed from the Civil War, the Mexican War and the War of 1812."John Allen, for one, who served in K Company of the 7th Regiment of the Indiana Infantry, left his widow Lucinda when the chronic stomach ailment finally killed him in 1866, a year after he contracted what was probably dysentery in Tennessee as he fought a waning battle of the Civil War. There was another Daviess County Allen, too, this one from Montgomery, who didn't die  in the war, but was shot on the left shoulder on April 6, 1865, near Amealia Springs, far from home in Virginia. "There's such interesting things in all these papers," Dowling said. "The things they had to do and the way they had to live ‹ some of it's downright funny and some of it will curl your hair."There's no telling how long it will take to identify each piece of history now stuffed in the clerk's office. Dougherty, Dowling and Kenworthy believe many remaining records were never properly stored after the fires, but were just put up to get them out of the way during clean up efforts. Dougherty, at least, figures the next generation of historians, bitten by what they call the genealogy bug, will have to finish what they've started. Meanwhile, she said, they'd welcome any willing and inquisitive newcomers to their committee, the membership of which is about a dozen. "It all tells us so much about human nature," Dowling said. "It tells us who we are and why we are who we are, and so much about why we do what we do."Because while there's always been tragedy, lack, poverty and injustice in the world and Daviess County, there's a balanced amount of joy, abundance, success and right outcomes. And finding that out, makes it all worthwhile, the three women agreed.