Preservation of Probate Records

The Florence County South Carolina Probate Court has recently received a grant to “preserve on microfilm more of its crucial, aging estate papers, some of which are more than a century old.” 

See Charles Tomlinson, Grant to help probate court preserve estate papers, Morning News Online, April 30, 2008, which also explains:

The $849 grant is the first the court has received from the S.C. State Historical Records Advisory Board, Florence County Probate Judge Kenneth Eaton said.

It will be supplemented by $5,000 in the court budget for hiring someone to transfer the documents to microfilm, Eaton said.

The grant will be used to preserve papers from 1917 to 1959. Estate documents from the county’s 1888 formation through 1916 are already on microfilm, Eaton said.

“They get a lot of wear and tear because they’re public documents — people can come and open them up,” he said of the original paper files.

Microfilm, with a potential life of 500 years, makes estate papers and other fragile records easier to view and duplicate, according to the probate court.

Special thanks to Neil E. Hendershot of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania law firm of Goldberg Katzman, P.C., who also authors the PA Elder, Estate & Fiduciary Law Blog, for bringing this article to my attention.