EDWARDSVILLE — The Madison County Circuit Clerk’s office discovered several “fascinating” and historic records during the completion of its first phase of a digitization project.
Circuit Clerk Tom McRae said he initiated the project more than a year ago to help streamline the process of court record searches and storage within the office. While completing the project, that included scanning more than 9 million documents , numerous historic records were discovered.
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“We’ve been working on digitizing records for the past six months,” Circuit Clerk Tom McRae said.
McRae, who is a self-proclaimed history buff said not only are the documents historical, but captivating as well.
One such record is that of Arshag Garbadian who applied for United States citizenship 1919. The document sheds a great deal of light on Garbadian's journey to become a naturalized citizen who eventually lived in Granite City.
He was born in Van Armenia, Turkey in 1890 and arrived in New York by ship through France in 1913. The 105-year-old yellowed and frayed document shows Garbadian's intention to "renounce all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, and particularly to Mehemmed VI Emperor of the Ottomans of whom I am now a subject".
Other interesting items found include envelopes used in the office by former Circuit Clerk Willard V. “Butch” Portell in 1976. The front side of the envelopes are standard however the entire back is a scene highlighting the United States Bi-Centennial including Paul Revere and George Washington and the Boston Tea Party.
The digitization project is funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, which McRae requested $600,000 from the County Board. The first phase cost nearly $200,000.
"| appreciate the support of the county board as this money will allow record searches and storage to be much less cumbersome", McRae said.
Alisa Adair, who is the Circuit Clerk’s Office’s manager of records and archives, described the digitization effort as a major step forward.
“Much of our records were stored on microfilm or microfiche,” Adair said. “It had been degraded from so much use over the years and it was time consuming to locate needed records".
Court records will now be stored on the cloud and rather than cross-referencing paper documents and microfilm cases can be located on a computer.
McRae said that access to court documents is governed by the Administrative Office of Illinois Courts.
"I think people would be surprised that most records are open to the public,” he said. “Our goal is to embrace technology that preserves the court records while making them as easily accessible as possible to all stakeholders.”
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