By Paul Tuthill
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-967480.mp3
Northhampton, MA – Documents that chronicle the early history of colonial settlers in part of western Massachusetts, that had been tucked away in storage ,will be made publically accessible. The paper records dealing with Hampshire County business from as early as 1677 have been donated to the library system at UMass Amherst. WAMC"s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill reports.
The collection includes volumes of court dockets, census records, maps and construction documents. Rob Cox, the head of Special Collections and Archives at the UMass Amherst Libraries calls it an exceptional collection. He says it is a treasure trove of information on the history of the Pioneer Valley.
Cox says the collection will be a valuable resource to legal scholars, genealogists, planners, developers ,engineers..and of course historians.
Among the gems noted so far are hand drawn maps more than 200 years old. Construction plans for dams and railroads. The court documents include a case where a domestic dispute resulted in awoman sentenced to be lashed 40 times about the breast in public. Another case where a man was fined for not teaching his children to read. There are notes on a coroners' inquest into a suspected case of death by witchcraft.
The records had been kept in filing cabinets in a storeroom in the old county courthouse in Northampton, what is now the offices of the Hampshire Council of Governments. Cox said most the paper is in good shape..
The effort to preserve the documents for the public domain was spear headed by Michael Cote, an environmental planner who ,two years ago, went digging into the old records in search of a map for a project he was working on and was stunned by what he discovered
Cote said private collectors he contacted estimated it would cost in excess of one and half million dollars to preserve the papers. But Cote and the Hampshire Council of Government wanted the material to remain in the public domain
Eileen Stewart , a member of the council from Williamsburg, is thrilled UMass agreed to take the collection.
UMass is having the collection appraised. It will take about two years to have it all digitized