SUNBURY – Two hogs, lard, a clothes wringer, bureau and bookcase, and a lot of posts.
Those are just a few of the items John Lewars, of Turbotville, possessed when he died — 140 years ago.
Lewars’ 1869 final inventory is one of the many treasures that can be found stuffed into the dark, damp catacombs of the Northumberland County Courthouse.
Researchers, genealogists or just the curious can find a treasure trove of documents, dating to pre-Revolutionary War America, that list not only possessions, but give those living today a taste of what life was like for the founders of the county, state and nation.
Ferreted away in the basement of the courthouse are marriage applications dating from 1885, birth and death records dating from 1893-1905, and deeds, wills and orphans court documents dating from 1772.
Many of the papers are stuffed into boxes, some crushed under the weight of the box on top of it, others stained with water marks.
“The documents that are down here are used every day,” said Mary Zimmerman, Northumberland County’s register and recorder of deeds. “And there’s no backup. If there was a fire or a flood, it’s gone.”
Perhaps recognizing the dire conditions the records are in, Northumberland County Commissioner Frank Sawicki last week announced the county is interested in purchasing Sunbury City Hall, which sits next door to the courthouse on Market Street, in order to safely store all documents on one floor, above flood level, with security.
“The amount of records the county has is substantial,” Sawicki said. “We want to preserve records that date back before the Declaration of Independence was signed.”
In 1780, Northumberland County represented a broad expanse of Pennsylvania, stretching as far north to current-day Bradford County, east to Luzerne County, south to Dauphin County and west to Venango County.
For this reason, records in the Northumberland County Courthouse document life for those who today would have lived far outside the county’s current boundaries.
Among the county’s marriage records is one that states a young Perry County girl named Anna Albert married her older beau, Clarence Dimminick. Anna married only after her father, M.L. Albert, gave his permission as his daughter, then just 18, was not of the legal marrying age of 21.
Other documents record the deaths of some of Sunbury’s earliest residents. It was in August 1900 when Lizzie Koble died of typhoid fever at a home at 526 Susquehanna Ave., Sunbury. Just 24 years old, she was buried in Pomfret Manor Cemetery.
“It’s not just dates,” said Cindy Inkrote, executive director of the Northumberland County Historical Society. “You begin to have some insight into how they lived, what they did and who they were and how they fit into the community.”
Zimmerman is required by state law to keep all of the original documents currently stored in the courthouse basement, and as able she and her staff have digitized wills and orphans court documents dating to 1987, and marriage documents dating to 1950.
Some deeds and mortgage indexes also have been digitized.
But Zimmerman said many of the older deeds, written in colored ink on colored, now brittle paper, are too fragile to scan without the help of archiving professionals.
According to Zimmerman, the records escaped destruction in 1936 when they were rushed from the first to the second floor of the courthouse while floodwaters rose from the Susquehanna River.
Frederick Reed, Zimmerman’s predecessor, often came to the courthouse after heavy rains to sweep the water out of the basement to keep it from destroying the documents stored there.
Recent drainage upgrades have solved that problem, Zimmerman said, and she and her staff have done their best to protect the documents by asking those who handle them to return them in their found state to their original location.
“It’s a wealth of information that deserves better than this,” Zimmerman said.
-- E-mail comments to aorourke@dailyitem.com
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