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Wilkes October 3, 2022 Making Copies of Deed Books In June 1895, the Wilkes County Board
of Commissioners placed an ad in the local newspaper, The Chronicle,
soliciting bids to transcribe deed books “J” and “O” for the Registry of
Deeds. Several bids were received. R. C. Walsh offered to copy Book “O”
for $28. E. O. Mastin quoted 5 cents per page of
100 words.
Davie E. Willborn offered to copy,
index, and cross index Book “O” for $27.38 and Book “J” for $28.40. C. L. Hartley simply quoted 10 cents
per page. I. M. Crouch wrote, “I will try to do
the work correctly if my bid is received.
I will bid $40.” W. E. James quoted 8 cents per page. Jessie W. Davis quoted $23.75 for Book “O”
and $32.45 for Book “J”.
W. L. Brewer quoted $30 for copying the
books, but it’s not clear if that was each or both. R. H. McNeill quoted $72.50 to copy
both books “in a business-like manner and in as soon a time possible”.
W. M. R. Church quoted $65 for Book “J”
and $50 for Book “O”. W. C. Fletcher offered to copy and
index one of the books for $40. His
poor handwriting looks familiar, so maybe he had done other work for the
county. John P. Crouch bid $24.74, but he didn’t
specify if that was for one or both. Frank D. Hackett quoted $50 for one
book or $90 for both. R. L. Carlton quoted $25 to copy the
books. W. A. McNeil said that he “will coppy
them” for $10. No Copy Machines I don’t know who was awarded the job
since there aren’t any documents in the file about the winning bid. Today, most of the deed books are about 600
pages each. Book “J” is over 680 pages
and covers deeds from around 1815. Book
“O” is over 640 pages covering deeds from around 1838. I wonder if the old books needed to be
copied because they were in bad condition.
Or maybe a second copy was needed for another location. This was long before the days of
photocopying, and this would have been a daunting project for whomever won
the bid. It would also be a good opportunity
to make a transcription error. I’ve
found many deeds in these old books that are clearly missing metes and bounds. If someone were copying multiple pages per
day, it would be easy to skip a line or jumble the numbers in a distance and
direction. I imagine this is one reason
that some of these old deeds are hard to understand and impossible to draw.
Page 638 of Deed Book “O”. Would you copy this for 10 cents per page? The images for these bids begin at this
link and continue for the next several pages: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C33K-2QVH-J?i=205 One Final Thought A few years ago I saw a deed that
referenced a page in Book “X”. Today
there isn’t a Book “X”, and the name that was referenced isn’t found in the
index for any of the existing books. (I
wish I could remember where I saw that, but I didn’t write it down. I’ll stumble across it again someday.) I believe that Book “X” is just missing,
and I wonder which other books might be as well? There are no books “U”, “V”, “W”, “X”, or “Y”,
but there is a “Z”. It’s amazing to me
that any of the oldest deed books survived the chaos that must have existed
for governments during the Civil War.
And the storage conditions certainly weren’t as secure and protective
as they are today. There were no climate
controlled rooms back then! We’re
lucky so many of these old record books have survived to document random
moments in history.
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