2012 – FamilySearch came to Isle of Wight Clerk’s Office and worked here approximately 10 months, taking high quality pictures of the County’s historic documents, and loose paper documents dating back to 1750 that were discovered bound in boxes, during the move from the old Clerk’s Office building to the Young-Laine Courts building in 2010. Valerie Schmidt-Wilson was one of the volunteers who came to the Clerk’s Office daily and worked with other volunteers from the Isle of Wight County Historical Society to assist FamilySearch, by opening old documents, and flat filed them in preparation for FamilySearch to digitize.
When FamilySearch completed their work, Valerie Schmidt-Wilson met with Sharon Jones, Clerk, and shared her vision in making these documents presentable and available to researchers that visit the Randall Booth Records Room. Valerie offered her time, as a volunteer, and this major project began, with Valerie cleaning, organizing, and digitizing the loose documents, with the ultimate goal being to index by name and document for easy access. Her passion for Isle of Wight County history is inspiring, and the reason for the Project’s ongoing success.
The Library of Virginia was consulted, and they approved of the project. Valerie has continually worked with each document, one page at a time, giving each document that corresponded with a digital image a name, using the organization structure based on the Library of Virginia’s suggestions, and she has been in the Clerk’s Office almost every day of the week for the past 7 years.
The Library of Virginia allowed Valerie, along with the Clerk, to bring back to the County approximately 75,000 documents housed in the LVA warehouse for safekeeping, for the purpose of processing these documents, such as Guardian Accounts, which present interesting stories and historic facts, and this process has been completed.
The efforts of Valerie Schmidt-Wilson have resulted in a massive world of knowledge with what she calls…”Records Project”. Due to her dedication to the “Records Project”, all Isle of Wight County historic Chancery, Criminal, General Court, Land, Law Suits and Guardian Accounts, loose paper documents through 1865 have been conserved, organized, correlated with the respective digital images, and made ready for public access, through the “Records Project” computer available to the public in the Records Room, where researchers can access the huge volume of images.
Many have come to visit the Isle of Wight County Randall Booth Records Room, met Valerie, and have been guided through the records to find their personal history. Valerie has been, and continues to be, an asset to the Clerk’s Office, giving of her time and hard work to a worthy cause, and to a cause that will be appreciated for years to come.
(The story of “Loose papers” was printed in the Slice of Smithfield edition Spring/Summer 2018, featuring Valerie Schmidt-Wilson).