nothin Land Records Scanned Back To 1786 —  Offline | New Haven Independent

Land Records Scanned Back To 1786 — Offline

Sam Gurwitt Photo

Vera Morrison in the vault.

In the vault in the town clerk’s office at the Hamden Government Center, a large red book has a page of yellow parchment recording a land transaction from July 5, 1786, the town’s first. That page, just like the records recorded on Jan. 22, 2019 and every single one in between, is now scanned and viewable on the computers along one wall of the office.

It took Hamden Town Clerk Vera Morrison 15 years and considerable effort to scan them all in order to make them searchable and more accessible for residents and researchers. She recently completed the job.

To have records scanned back all the way to 1786 is not common. New Haven, for instance, has its records scanned back to 1953.

While Hamden is taking extra steps to digitally preserve its documents, it is not putting those records online, the way, say, communities like New Haven does. That’s because, Morrison said, she is concerned about protecting people’s privacy on the Internet. (More on that later in this story.)

In 1912, with the advent of the typewriter, land records began to be typed. From 1948 – 1968, however, the indexes were handwritten again. While the equipment that scanned the records could read the information on typed records and create the index automatically, it could not read handwritten indexes. That meant Morrison had to pay the town’s land records team to go through every index from the 20 years and enter the information manually.

That was the first big hurdle as town clerk, Morrison said. Thank god I’ve been town clerk long enough to see it finished,” she said of the whole digitization process.

In the Vault

Morrison has also made a point of conserving Hamden’s history in the documents she cares for. All of the historic records are bound into large books; the first 62 books all have handwritten land records.

In order to preserve the oldest records, each page had to be de-acidified and then enclosed in Chinese velum paper. It took a lot of time to complete and cost between $800 and $1000 per book, but these records are now safe for the next 500 years.

Preserved land records from 1786.

The vault also contains a copy of a broadside about the town’s namesake, John Hampden, suing Charles I in a case about ship money. In some places, Morrison explained, his name was spelled Hampden,”; in others it was spelled Hambden.” She got money from the state to restore the broadside. The original is housed in the library.

In the corner of the vault is a large grandfather clock dating from 1910 that was brought over to the vault from the old town hall when it was restored. It had mercury in it, so Morrison had to send it to a specialist to get it removed before it could be safely stored in the vault.

Money for the preservation of historic documents comes from the Historic Documents Preservation Program. The program, which is run by the state library, is dedicated to helping municipalities preserve government records.

That fund has been invaluable for the town clerks’ offices,” Morrison said of the program.

The town clerk’s office charges $60 for the first page of each land record filed. Of the $60, the state treasurer gets $36, the town gets $13, the state library gets $8 for the preservation program, and the town clerk gets $3. We do all the work and they get all the money!” Morrison joked, in reference to the state.

The Many Hats of a Town Clerk

Vera Morrison: “We wear many hats in a town clerk’s office.”

Morrison has been Hamden’s town clerk since December of 1995. This coming November will mark the end of her 12th two-year term.

We wear many hats in a town clerk’s office,” Morrison explained. In addition to recording land transactions, she and her staff are responsible for keeping vital records (births, deaths, marriages, burials), recording the minutes of every board and commission meeting, administering ballots at election time, and registering businesses, dogs, and liquor licenses, just to name a few responsibilities.

We sometimes become like the bartender of the town,” she said. Residents will come to her office with some frustration relating to town government, and she has to calm them down, help them however she can, and explain to them why things are the way they are.

For that, she has her staff to help her: We have a very compassionate group of women, so we kind of take everyone under our wing.”

Sometimes, she said, she has to think outside the box to figure out how to help residents. When residents try to get something done, a lot of agencies will say No, you can’t do it,’ and it’s up to us … to find a legal way to do it.”

This past fall was a busy one for the clerk’s office because of the statewide elections. Morrison said that she and her team issued over 2,000 absentee ballots in 20 days; she usually sees numbers like that only at presidential elections.

I saw a level of interest in this election that I haven’t seen in a long, long time,” said Morrison. She was heartened by the number of young people who had come to the office to register themselves. Usually, it’s the parents who drag their newly-adult children to the office to register them. Not this time, however.

Though the town clerk is an elected office, and Morrison has a party affiliation (she’s a democrat), she must remain non-partisan. Perhaps she was destined for the job from birth. She’s a Libra. My daughters tell me my birth sign is the scales of justice.”

Security Concerns

The ~1910 clock inside the vault.

New Haven has its land records available online. In Hamden, the land records are available to the public, but one must go in to the town clerk’s office to view them.

Morrison decided not to put Hamden’s records online because in some cases, land records have people’s social security numbers on them, or other personal information.

Most don’t contain social security numbers. Morrison said she had spoken with other clerks, whose approaches differ.

At this time, I want to protect the confidentiality of my residents’ information,” said Morrison. I do have a problem with people … using it as a tool to compromise other people’s confidentiality.”

In fact, New Haven does block out social security numbers before digitizing documents, according to Deputy City/Town Clerk May Reed. She said her staff redacts other personal information as well, such as military discharge information.

Hamden’s Morrison said she plans to take a survey of other town clerks to see what others think about putting the records online. There will be a conference in April, and she anticipates that that social security numbers on land records will be a topic there.

Representatives from the New England Association of City and Town Clerks and the International Institute of Municipal Clerks said they do not know of any data collected on how many municipalities have put their land records online.

Though Morrison believes it’s unlikely, if the state were to decide to require that all confidential information be redacted from digitized land records, that would cost towns exorbitant amounts of money.” For now, it’s up to each town clerk to decide.

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