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August 30, 2007

Couple on archiving mission

Stephen Tait

In the bowels of City Hall, two small vaults no bigger than closets hold records dating back to the 1700s. Dozens of thick, leather-bound books line the shelves. Old assessor plans in large books gather dust, yet remain colorful and accurate in their hand-drawn depictions of city neighborhoods.

And dozens of blueprints — of the long-razed Putnam School on the Bartlet Mall, for instance — lie rolled up inside cardboard boxes.

The documents and books hold massive amounts of information:

Mortgage records from the 1890s; birth and death certificates from generations past; a listing of members of the Newburyport militia from 1870s, who signed up according to which ward they lived in; and dozens of other pages, books and volumes of information about the city’s past and its past residents.

“It’s a gold mine down here,” said Roslin Esposito, a Plum Island resident.

Despite the historical content, no one really knows what information and documents the vaults hold, City Clerk Richard Jones said.

But now, an effort to make a digital record of the documents is underway.

One day a week for the past three weeks, Ralph and Roslin Esposito have taken on the arduous task of photographing and creating a spreadsheet of assessor maps, land surveyor plans, fire insurance surveys and others.

“There is a lot of information here,” Ralph Esposito said. “We don’t know what we are going to find.”

Ralph is a retired land surveyor and museum curator. During his time surveying, when he worked in southern New Hampshire and Essex County, he had talked to Mayor John Moak, then the city clerk, who told him about the old maps in the basement of City Hall.

Ever since then, the idea of cataloging the information during retirement has “been in the back of my mind.” He said many of the documents of old property lines and deed restrictions could even be helpful for other surveyors or those researching the history of their homes.

Documenting the plans is a task that will take the Espositos until at least the end of next summer.

“I just find it very interesting,” Ralph said.

Of course, the Espositos’ efforts are just the beginning of the documentation, Jones said. The city clerk is hoping that others will come forward to volunteer to archive the rest of the information. Jones said he’s contacted the library and its archive staff to see about future documentation.

“No one had a listing of what we had, never mind an index,” he said. “I thought it would be interesting to find out what we have.”

Once such an effort is complete, Jones said it is also important to figure out if the basement of City Hall is the best place for some of the documents. He said it may make sense to put some of the more important records in the climate-controlled library archive.

For now, though, the Espositos will continue to work through the stacks of plans.

The oldest document Ralph has found is a copy of a map from the 1700s that shows all the land between the Atlantic Ocean and West Newbury. He’s also found maps used as insurance surveys.

On those maps, dating from 1906, each property and the footprint of each home is outlined on the linen-lined paper. The buildings are colored in with water paints, depending on whether they are a business or a private residence. Next to each business is a description of what fire safety controls are in place to protect the building.

For each plan that the Espositos document, they include its title, what street it depicts, the date, the map’s scale, its size, its originator and a description.

“When I was a surveyor, you could never find a drawing like this because it was never filed,” Ralph said. “It could be very helpful.”

As the work continues, others will continue to be impressed by the possibilities.

Jones walked into one of the vaults yesterday morning, coffee in hand, to explain the range of information in the books. Surrounded by books, he reached out and grabbed one of the volumes.

“You put your hand on anything, who knows what you’ll get,” he said, reaching blindly for a book, then reading its title.

“Dog licenses from 1897.”

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