43
Probate sets goal to preserve records
Photo
Judge Mark Belinky
Original records have intrinsic value, a Valley archivist says.
YOUNGSTOWN — The retention and preservation of old probate court records is important for historical and genealogical purposes, said Mahoning County’s Probate Court judge and local preservation advocates.
Judge Mark Belinky said he wants to preserve the original paper records in their bound volumes and scan them into a computer format.
“The history of our community should always be preserved,” Judge Belinky said. “We ought to make sure that we have them for future generations.”
To achieve his goal, the judge conducted the first meeting of an ad hoc committee of local experts he formed to study ways to preserve records of marriages, adoptions, guardianships, wills and estates. The records are now housed in the county courthouse basement — some of them dating back to the mid-19th century.
“I’m concerned that the records are deteriorating,” Judge Belinky said, adding that he wants to “preserve them for all time.”
Among those attending the first meeting in the probate courtroom on Tuesday were Tim Seman of Youngstown, vice president of the Mahoning County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society, and Pamela Speis, an archivist with the Mahoning Valley Historical Society.
“The original record itself has intrinsic value as well as the information that it contains,” Speis observed. Sometimes microfilm made from an original record is illegible, incompletely or poorly made, or stored incorrectly, she said.
Speis said MVHS possesses some Mahoning County Probate Court documents, including probate estate case files from 1846 to 1900 and original probate civil case files from about the same time frame.
The judge said he would prefer to keep court records in the courthouse, but he said he wasn’t sure if basement conditions there are optimal for preservation. The judge noted that heavy rains have caused flooding in that location.
The first step in the records preservation process should be to take an inventory of the records, Speis said.
Seman said members of his organization might be willing to volunteer their time to conduct the inventory.
He also said there are many sources of grants for records preservation, including the National Association of Government Archive and Records Administrators.
“Anything that is decided as far as what happens to the records has to be cleared though the Ohio Historical Society,” Speis said.
“There should be no more debate regarding whether it’s valuable to protect the materials,” Seman said. “It has a huge bearing on future historians and researchers looking at the lives that we’ve lived in this day and age,” he said of more current record-keeping.
milliken@vindy.com