PAGES
OF HISTORY FADING AWAY IN LOCAL ARCHIVES
Roxbury
clerk, county seek state grant to help preserve thousands
of historical records dating to the 1750s
BY
MATT MANOCHIO
DAILY RECORD
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
ROXBURY -- Circuses or traveling shows needed to spend $25 a
day if they were going to set up shop in the township in
1916.
The total budget for the township back in 1863 was $5,777.34.
The oath of fidelity that recruits needed to give to King George
II back in the 1750s hasn't been needed for more than 200 years,
but it sits in a bottom drawer in the municipal building on Route
46.
Township Clerk BettyLou DeCroce has volumes of township and state
laws, resolutions, ordinances, tax bills and maps dating back
to before the Revolution.
She has thousands of current documents, too, including Open Public
Records Act requests.
"The OPRA documents totally increased our paper load since that law (was
approved)," she said Monday.
DeCroce is currently working with the county to secure a Public
Archives and Records Infrastructure and Support grant, or PARIS,
to preserve and rebound the countless older documents that are
piled and stacked in the municipal building, and to have them
relocated to more appropriate storage facilities to clear up
room for newer paperwork.
Freeholder Doug Cabana said Monday that county officials are
working on the grant application already.
"We're going (for) a PARIS grant not only for the county, but all the towns," Cabana
said.
"This came out of the Shared Services Committee. (The county) would serve
as a central depository for county and municipal records," he explained.
Cabana said the county is trying to identify structures that
are big enough and safe enough to secure millions of documents.
One of the storage rooms in the Roxbury municipal building, for
instance, is filled with nothing but loaded filing cabinets and
stacks of boxes containing even more documents on top of them.
Name a year, and paperwork written during that time is likely
there, and in other parts of the municipal building and in rooms
in the Senior Center on Eyland Avenue.
"I'm going to make sure I preserve these documents," DeCroce said. "I
think it's something the state of New Jersey wouldn't mind having in their records."
She's especially referring to a delicate book documenting the
acts of the general assembly in New Jersey from 1753 to 1761.
Its wrinkled pages are shaded yellow and brown due to age and
give off the unmistakable musty aroma of centuries-old parchment.
All the pages were written with perfect script by quilled pens.
"It's really sad because these books are getting worse each year," she
said about their deteriorating condition.
George Washington was decades away from becoming president, so
the books refer to King George of England.
"I swear to be true to our sovereign Lord King George and to serve honestly
and faithfully in defense of his person, crown and dignity against all his enemies
and opposers whatforever," read the oath of fidelity soldiers needed to
pledge to their King back then, as documented in the General Assembly volume
from the 1750s.
"And to observe and obey his Majesty's orders and the orders of the generals
and officers set over me by his majesty," it concluded.
DeCroce said she doesn't yet know how much it will cost to preserve,
rebound and store the documents. She plans to write a detailed
summary of the township's voluminous records and submit it to
a company that specializes in restoration of this kind.
________________________________________
Matt Manochio can be reached at (973) 989-0652 or mmanochi@gannett.com.
