Montgomery County Archives Preservation Assessment

FAIN: PG-51226-11

Montgomery County (Clarksville, TN 37040-3492)
Jill Hastings-Johnson (Project Director: May 2010 to October 2012)

A preservation assessment of the historical records and special collections of northern Tennessee's Montgomery County. Holdings include court minutes, probate documents, and birth records dating from the 18th century, along with maps, transcripts of oral history interviews, family letters, and photographs documenting the history and culture of the region. Examples include personal letters chronicling the history of slavery, including a significant slave uprising in the region; the "tobacco wars" between independent and corporate growers in the late 1800s to early 1900s; the rise and fall of the region's iron industry; and local African American family life in the 1930s.

This project will consist of an assessment of the collections housed in the Department of Preservation of Records in Montgomery County, Tennessee. Conducted by a professional preservationist, this project will assess the physical collections and their current storage conditions, as well as the environmental conditions of the physical space within which the collections are housed. This assessment will be used to prepare short- and long-term recommendations for preservation and housing, with an eye toward the possibility of digitizing a portion of the records now contained in the collection.