Records Restoration

In 2006, the Tennessee Supreme Court Historical Society, in conjunction with The Tennessee State Library and Archives, launched the ambitious project of restoring, indexing and preserving over 10,000 boxes of Tennessee Supreme Court records. The records, which date back to 1794, had been stored in the upper floors of the Capitol building. Not surprisingly, time and less than ideal storage conditions in the form of lack of moisture and coal dust from the building's prior heating system had left the records brittle, warped and dirty.

The Society secured a $30,000.00 Byrne grant from the federal government, along with a $70,000 grant from Ancestry.com, to fund the restoration and preservation project. Thereafter, the records were moved from the Capitol building to The Tennessee State Library and Archives so graduate students, volunteers and interns could process the records from each Grand Division.

To make the records more accessible to researchers and the general public, as the records are restored, they are also indexed using 14 separate fields including the lead parties on appeal, the year of the appeal, the country from which the appeal originated, etc. Since the project began, more than 517 on-site researchers have used the processed files, in addition to the untold numbers that have accessed the online index at http://tnsos.org/tsla/SupremeCourtCases/

To give you some idea of the painstaking nature of this undertaking, there are currently twelve Tennessee State Library and Archives staffers and four part-time staffers assigned to this project and they can process about 500-700 cases per month. This project recently passed the half-way mark with over 50,000 records processed. While this project is slow, it is certainly worthy and the Society along with The Tennessee State Library & Archives are both committed to completing it.

The Society would like to extend its deepest appreciation to all those who have supported this project with their time, money and talent. A special thanks is extended to Dr. Wayne C. Moore, Assistant State Archivist at the Tennessee State Library & Archives.