Decatur’s Treasure Box:
Morgan County’s Archives

It’s appropriate that the headquarters of the Morgan County Archives is housed in a restored 1927 bank building. As Alabama’s only county archive, it’s the repository of the legal, social, ancestral, and official documents of not just Morgan County, but much of Northern Alabama.

Officially, the main purpose of the Archives is to act as the primary records management agency for the county. That means it organizes and maintains the marriage licenses, land records and other files. Considering that government agencies these days generate more paper in one month than they did in an entire year 50 years ago, that’s a big responsibility on its own.

But the legislation that created the Archives added a second role – as a holding and storing agency for historical records from the private sector. Its drawers hold a myriad of records from the early 1800s – probate and circuit court records, criminal records, and lawsuits. The early sheriff’s records are here, too, complete with feeding logs for the jail and arrest records. Those can get real interesting, especially when names of prominent families and individuals show up.

Susan Bzdell oversees both areas of responsibility for the Archives. With a Masters Degree in History and Archival Administration and family roots that stretch back to Huntsville in the early 1800s, she’s ideally suited for the job. While the modern-day duties get much of her attention, she admits that the historical aspect really thrills her. "People say if you want to get me really excited, all it takes is moldy paper."

Much of that "moldy paper" translates into genealogy records. Researchers come from all over the country to go through the 3500 donated families files and bible records that trace the family trees of hundreds of Alabamans.

Then there are the histories of churches, fraternal organizations, and civic clubs. There are census rolls, tax records, and newspapers. Some of the printed materials doesn’t fit into any particular category, like brochures and flyers announcing meetings and revivals. Or an early self-help publication, a tract put out by a church entitled "Overcoming Bashfulness" that the shy could obtain at the turn of the century.

Even a hundred years ago, people were fascinated by visual wonders. The early daguerreotypes were the special effects of their age. People were eager to be photographed, not in an effort to be discovered by Hollywood (which wasn’t around yet, anyway), but to have a chance to be recorded for posterity, even to feel a touch of immortality.

More than six thousand prints of old photos fill seven ring binders in the Archives. Most of the photos of the times are portraits, with people sitting stiffly in formal poses, their faces grim and serious. But there are the other shots, the ones that capture mundane scenes of ordinary life of the times and are fascinating because they are so ordinary – the hog cookings, river baptisms, the gang at the local barbershop, barefoot kids in their Sunday best, dogs sitting beside their shotgun-toting owners, mule teams. While many of the subjects are nameless, Susan says the animals get special attention.

"We always try to get the names of the dogs and the mules. People like to point to a print and say, ‘that’s Ole Blue.’ It adds a touch of reality."

The most impressive and historic group of photos are 127 pictures taken during the 1933 trial of The Scottsboro Boys. This was the trial that established the right of all defendants to a jury by their peers. A local photographer, Fred Hirshiga, was given access to all of the defendants, witnesses, and officials involved in the case. His grandson, Glen Johnson, sold the collection to the Archives for $25,000 in 1998.

It’s a series of gripping pictures – scenes of the crowds outside the courthouse, the National Guard assigned to maintain order, the witnesses. One portrait of Ruby Bates, the white teenager who recanted her testimony of being raped by the black defendants, is shot in a small, windowless room. She sits in the center of the room; behind her, one wall is in shadow, the other in light. The most heartwrenching shot is of defendant Haywood Patterson and his mother sitting in the jail. He stares off in the distance, while his mother stares at the camera with a look of heartbreak and pleading.

Susan plans to develop an educational display and program around them, one that will explain the significance of the trial and put it into context of the times and what it means today.

While the Archives are not a museum, many people donate non-paper artifacts. Susan tries to take everything that’s offered. "It’s so rewarding for people to know that it’s here and it’s safe." There are work cards and stationary from the L&N Railroad; two sets of one-piece underwear (one in cotton, the other nylon); high-top, button-up shoes; Indian spearheads and beads; the entire collection from a Civil War re-enactor.

"We have to turn some things away because they are so valuable and we don’t have museum-level security. We had an authentic Civil War saber offered to us, but had to turn it down. We’d like to build an endowment fund and buy things from the private sector." The operating budget comes from $3 of the fee charged for filing any document for probate. That comes to about $90-thousand a year.

Originally, the Archives were housed in an old warehouse, but it moved to the Great Tennessee Valley Bank building in the center of Decatur in 1995. The oldest of the old records was in better shape than the building. "We spent the first six months scraping crud off the floors and painting the walls," while trying to organize and store the materials. People were bringing things into them almost daily then. While the rate and volume of donations has slowed a bit, as word of the Archives gets around, more people show up with old deeds, licenses, and bits of family flotsam. As a historian and archivist, Susan says it’s a wonderful problem to have.

"Someday we will have all of it catalogued, but right now, it’s coming in so fast that it’s hard to keep up with it."

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