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| Image Source, http://www.wsmv.com/story/27791014/van-buren-countys-administrative-building-destroyed-in-fire |
Bad News ...
We always hate to report when a repository for documents has been destroyed. Unfortunately, last week the Van Buren County (TN) administrative building was destroyed by fire.
Historical records from the 1840s and later were destroyed, including Civil War artifacts, pictures from the Civil War, birth certificates, death certificates, and thousands of historical records. The local historical society also was housed in the building and lost everything as well.
Good News ...
Though we can never replace those original records that were lost and apparently there are backup copies of some county records (the extent of those holdings is unclear), I did some checking at Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) and FamilySearch, two great resources for TN records, and found that they both have fairly extensive collections of materials for Van Buren County.
- marriages from 1840
- wills from 1840
- inventories of estates from 1840
- deed index from 1840
- chancery court minutes from 1868
- county court minutes from 1840
- circuit court minutes from 1840
- tax books from 1886
TSLA also has a partnership with Ancestry.com where select TN records are available via the Tennessee Electronic Library to residents of Tennessee
So, though we are greatly saddened to hear of the fire, it feels a bit better to know that many records had been microfilmed and/or digitized for Van Buren County and are still available to researchers.
This is a reminder that the more records that we can get microfilmed, scanned/digitized, photographed or preserved in some other way and then widely distributed elsewhere, increases the likelihood that in the event of a disaster, backups might be available so that all is not lost!
Editor’s Note: Related Upfront with NGS posts ...
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