Conservationists puzzle together Tennessee history

Macaela J. Bennett, [email protected], The Tennessee, August 1, 2015

With great attentiveness, Carol Roberts and Kat Trammell are delicately piecing together Tennessee history.

For decades, heaps of land records laid untouched in the state Capitol’s attic before being moved to the Tennessee State Library and Archives when it was built in the 1950s.  Now workers there are preserving the documents that detail land ownership and exchanges as far back as 1779.

By law, the documents must be kept permanently.  But right now, they are largely inaccessible to researchers because they are bundled together in boxes, where most of them are in poor condition.

Once they are available for more thorough examination, the land records will tell the tale of Tennessee’s separation from North Carolina, becoming its own territory and finally entering as America’s 16th state.

Roberts, the archives’ head conservationist, says the pieces of paper filled with hand-drawn sketches and detailed descriptions of property boundaries are dirty and fragile, with some left as brittle as dried leaves.

To restore them, Roberts and Trammell, an intern hired with funding provided by a recent Middle Tennessee Genealogical Society grant, must put every document through an extensive preservation process.

Under the rules of conservation, all their actions on a document must be able to be undone, which adds another layer of intricacy to the work.  Every land record arrives folded up, with some having additions or changes to the original record affixed using glue or wax, which they must carefully take apart.  They then use a small sponge to surface clean it before giving it a magnesium bicarbonate bath to neutralize the acid in the paper and ink and remove residue.

After drying, the documents are flattened in a large paper press for at least a week.  The last step, requiring the greatest amount of patience, includes repairing tears and holes using a thin Japanese tissue.

They brush on a wheat paste, then size a tissue piece to the tear and, once completed, the mend blends so well that it’s barely noticeable.

“It’s like a puzzle going back together permanently,” Roberts said.

Afterward, the repaired land records are stored in acid-free folders and boxes.

While both said they often try not to read the documents because it slows them down too much, they admitted that when curiosity overtakes them they make many intriguing discoveries.

“When I’m working, I have to turn the documents upside down so I won’t look at them because it takes too much time,” Roberts said.  “But it’s neat to see the creek and road names shown that still exist today.  Like Crab Orchard Valley.  That path is what is today I-40.”

Trammell said she is repeatedly fascinated by the amount of underhandedness evident in these early land deals.

“Even 200 years ago there were still nefarious activities,” Trammell said.

Roberts added that a lot of corruption plagued the selling and reselling of land.

“Soldiers received land grants as payment, but then there was a lot of confusion because multiple people would think they owned the same piece of land,” she said.

Another surprising facet to the records, Roberts and Trammell say, is the high number of women’s names they see.

“In census records (from that time period), women’s names don’t show up often, so it’s weird that they do in land grants,” Roberts said.

Ultimately, the time-intensive work Roberts and Trammell invest into preserving these land records is done to make them more accessible to researchers. Roberts said, eventually, they may even turn the project into an exhibit at the archives.