#52Ancestors - Week 40 - Preservation

This week's theme is Preservation, and it prompts me to think about all the records that have been preserved for family history researchers to find later.  For many of the records we have available today, preservation for future use was not a major consideration, and little thought was made for preservation at the time the records were created.  Some, indeed, have not survived at all due to a number of circumstances.  

Sometimes it has been the policy of those bodies which created records in the first place to destroy them after a certain period of time when they were no longer deemed necessary.  Several Irish Censuses were deliberately destroyed, with the original census returns for 1861 and 1871 destroyed shortly after the censuses were taken and those for 1881 and 1891 pulped during the First World War, possibly because of the paper shortage.  Deliberate destruction has also been the fate of the Australian census records, with the Australian Government making the decision that census records would be destroyed after statistical analysis was complete.  It is only in the most recent Australian censuses that individuals could choose to have their census forms retained for future use.

Some records have not survived for other reasons.  Wars have destroyed many records over the years, as have natural disasters such as fires and floods.  In September 1940, as the result of a fire caused by an incendiary bomb at the War Office Record Store in Arnside Street, London, approximately two thirds of the 6.5 million soldiers' documents for the First World War were destroyed.  World War 2 also saw the destruction of other records throughout Europe as buildings were bombed, burned and damaged.

The 1922 fire in the Dublin Public Records Office destroyed a number of Irish records.  The PRO housed many genealogical treasures including the remaining Irish census returns, originals wills dating to the 16th century, and more than 1,000 Church of Ireland parish registers filled with baptism, marriage and burial records.

Incorrect storage has seen records deteriorate to the point of being unusable around the world.  Many old record books have deteriorated over time, especially when they have not been stored in good conditions.  Deteriorating records have been found with damp and moulding pages, fading inks, brittle spines and damage from insects and animals.  While today we are much more aware of how to keep records from deteriorating, in the past this was not the case and many old records have paid the price.

For those records which have survived, the future often looks brighter today as a number of preservation and digitization projects around the world taking place very day.  This will hopefully benefit those who come after us in their own research.