Academics and court record custodians gathered at James Madison University last week to celebrate an award-winning collaboration. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
"Histories Along the Blue Ridge" is an online database of historical records from the Rockingham County Circuit Court and beyond. Its archives span from the macabre – such a 1958 shooting at an abandoned gas station in Rawley Springs, to the intoxicating – namely, moonshiners who got caught distilling "ardent spirits" during Prohibition.
CHAZ HAYWOOD: The mountains are great places to have fruit trees, and fruit trees make great moonshine!
Chaz Haywood is the clerk of court for Rockingham County. The project was presented with a 2023 Commonwealth Technology Award for "Innovative Use of Technology." Kevin Hegg, head of digital projects with JMU Libraries, said the next set of documents to upload includes military records from World War I. Through the court's partnership with JMU, graduate history students digitize the archives and decipher their meaning.
KEVIN HEGG: You can learn to digitize and after the first 500 records, you've mastered that. [Haywood laughs] But they're describing it, and then they're doing interpretive work.
The clerk's office shares some of those stories in a Daily News-Record column and on Facebook, like the 1916 prosecution of –
HAYWOOD: … a woman who didn't like the two young ladies her son was hanging out with, so she laced their candy with poison, and sent these girls poison! It's just amazing! And again, it's all sitting there in the courthouse, just waiting to be told.
The project has grown to include records from Augusta, Madison, and Rappahannock counties.
